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I am grateful for cookies.

I am grateful for cookies not just because they taste good but because it was cookies that drew me into the kitchen when I was a child. On the weekends my sisters and I baked cookies: oatmeal, chocolate chip, almond thins, chocolate crinkle. I grew to love baking, and soon that love for baking turned into a love for cooking.

Cookies were a staple of my childhood, but I haven’t baked many cookies recently. When I set out to make two batches of cookies yesterday, I felt giddy. Cookies! Warm, homemade cookies! Dipped in a glass of cold milk! I was a kid again.

These cookies are a jazzed-up version of the classic chocolate chip cookie. Dark chocolate chunks replace the traditional chips, and a combination of sour cherries, apricots and pecans simultaneously add sweet, salty, chewy, crunchy flavors and textures. I especially love the combination of sour cherries and dark chocolate chunks. If you don’t have the exact mix-ins, bake them anyway with whatever you have on hand—you can’t go wrong.

Makes about 3 dozen

Ingredients:

2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
2 sticks (½ pound) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
9 ounces good bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, cut into ½-inch pieces
¾ cup (4½ ounces) quartered dried apricots
1 cup (5 ounces) dried sour cherries
1 cup (4 ounces) coarsely chopped pecans

Preparation:

Put racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 375°F.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Beat together butter and sugars in a large bowl with an electric mixer at high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in flour mixture at low speed until just combined. Stir in chocolate, apricots, cherries, and pecans.

Drop heaping tablespoons of dough about 2 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until golden, about 12 minutes total. Cool cookies on sheets on racks for 5 minutes, then transfer to racks to cool.

Recipe from The Gourmet Cookbook (p 662).