Chocolate chip cookies #52: Based on Imperial Sugar’s Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Cookies. Baked on 7/25/15.

Before leaving for my business trip in DC I baked two batches of chocolate chip cookies. One of my East coast co-workers specifically requested two types of cookies (one with dried cherries and another with three different kinds of chocolate chips), but I doctored them both up a little to try a couple of new recipes from my “Best chocolate chip cookies?” Pinterest board. I was especially excited about this one in particular. I’ve saved several chocolate chip cookie recipes that include some kind of liquor, but I wasn’t at all sure how any of them would turn out. I was definitely looking forward to finding out, though. So on Friday I went to BevMo and bought a couple of tiny bottles of bourbon since I don’t usually keep alcohol in my house. At first I intended to add 1/4 cup of bourbon to the cookie dough, as the recipe instructed, but then I decided to try something a little different. I reconstituted the dried cherries in bourbon instead (by microwaving them in 1/2 cup bourbon for 1 minute) and drained the excess liquor before folding the fruit into the dough. In addition to that change, I didn’t really follow the rest of the original recipe either. Call me a rebel, but I used my perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe (because how can you improve on perfection?) and just added the boozy cherries. And the result was delicious! The bourbon flavor is pretty subtle, but you can definitely taste it along with the cherries. Out of curiosity, I think I’d like to try this again with a little more bourbon and see if I can make the flavor a bit more pronounced. Not overwhelming, but more obvious. I’ll let you know how it turns out!