Categories: Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup pecans chopped
- 1/2 cup cherry jam
- 1 box Cherry Chip cake mix
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 1/4 cup cherry liqueur or cherry juice
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon cherry extract (substitute vanilla extract if you don't have cherry)
- 2 cups Original Cool Whip, thawed
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- small jar of maraschino cherries, drained and cut in half vertically (optional for decorating your cookies)
Directions
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DO NOT preheat your oven yet. This dough needs to chill before baking.
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Use a food processor with the steel blade to chop the pecans into small pieces.
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Transfer the contents of the food processor to a small bowl.
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Put the cherry jam in the food processor.
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Process with the steel blade until the jam is smooth.
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Add the jam to the pecans in the smaller bowl on the counter.
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Pour HALF of the dry cake mix into a large mixing bowl.
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Add your beaten egg to the large mixing bowl and stir it in.
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Add the contents of the small bowl to your large mixing bowl and mix them in with a rubber spatula.
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Rinse out the smaller bowl, dry it with a paper towel, and pour in the cherry liqueur.
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Add the vanilla extract and the cherry extract.
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Stir the combine contents of the smaller bowl thoroughly.
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Measure the Cool Whip and add it to the smaller bowl.
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Stir gently with a rubber spatula until everything in the smaller bowl is combined. Be very careful not to stir too vigorously. You don’t want to stir all the air out of the Cool Whip.
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Add the contents of the small bowl to the large mixing bowl with the cake mix.
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STIR VERY CAREFULLY with the rubber spatula. Stir ONLY until everything is combined. Be very careful not to over-stir.
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Sprinkle the rest of the cake mix and gently fold everything together with the rubber spatula. Again, keep as much air in the batter as possible. Air is what will make your cookies soft and give them a melt-in-your-mouth quality.
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Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill the cookie dough for at least 1 hour in the refrigerator. It’s a little too sticky to form into balls without chilling it first.
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When your cookie dough has chilled and you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350°F and make sure the rack is in the middle position. DO NOT take your chilled cookie dough out of the refrigerator until after your oven has reached the proper temperature.
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While your oven is preheating, prepare your cookie sheets by spraying them with Pam or another nonstick baking spray, or lining them with parchment paper.
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Only work with one cookie at a time, they will stick together.
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Place the powdered sugar in a small, shallow bowl. You will be dropping cookie dough into this bowl to form dough balls and coating them with the powdered sugar.
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When your oven is ready, take your dough out of of the refrigerator. Using a teaspoon from your silverware drawer, drop the dough by rounded teaspoonful into the bowl with the powdered sugar. Roll the dough around with your fingers to form powdered-sugar-coated cookie dough balls.
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Place the coated cookie dough balls on your prepared cookie sheets, no more than 12 cookies on a standard-size sheet.
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If you decide you want to decorate your cookies, press half of a maraschino cherry, rounded side up, on top of each cookie before you bake them. Alternatively, you can decorate them with candy hearts or any other Valentine candy. For Valentine’s day, Andrea uses the little hearts with sayings printed on them or the red gelatin hearts with sugar on the top.
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Bake your Valentine Whippersnapper Cookies at 350°F for 10 minutes. Let them cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes, and then move them to a wire rack to cool completely. (This is a lot easier if you line your cookie sheets with parchment paper—then you don’t need to lift the cookies one by one. All you have to do is grab one end of the parchment paper and pull it, cookies and all, onto the wire rack.)
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Once the cookies are completely cool, store them between sheets of waxed paper in a cool, dry place. (Your refrigerator is cool, but it’s definitely not dry!)