Baked Chocolate Covered Cherries

What are your favorite Holiday Treats? Here is one of our family traditions. My teen loves to help make these sweet Christmas treats.

Baked Chocolate Covered Cherries

Ingredients
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. cocoa
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 c. margarine, softened (sorry folks but I tried butter and margarine works best)
1 c. sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
16oz jar Maraschino cherries with stems on (need about 30 cherries, separate juice from cherries)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In large bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, salt, b.powder and b. soda.
In another bowl, beat together margarine & sugar until fluffy.
Add egg & vanilla.
Gradually add dry ingredients & beat until well blended.
Shape dough into 1-2 inch balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet.
Press thumb into center and put in a cherry.  Cover top of cherry with more dough.
Bake 10-12 minutes and let cool completely.
While baking make frosting.

Frosting (optional)

6 oz pkg. semisweet chocolate pieces
1/2 c. sweetened condensed milk
Drained cherry juice

In a small saucepan, combine chocolate and sweetened condensed milk.
Heat until chocolate melts.
Stir in 4 tsp. of reserved cherry juice.
Once the cookies come out of the oven, spoon about 1/2-1 tsp over each cherry.

These are very yummy! They are time consuming to make but everyone loves them!