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The Garden House (Devon, England)

The destinations are beginning to blur but looking at the tour guide booklet, I see that we are now in Plymouth. Today, we visited two gardens designed by Keith Wiley.  The first is The Garden House , where Wiley worked as Head Gardener for 25 years (from 1978-2003). The 10-acre estate was purchased in the 1940s by former Eton schoolmaster Lionel Fortescue and his wife Katherine. It was formerly home to the  vicars of Buckland Monachronum. The Fortescue's renovated the gardens and ran a market garden business and raised cattle.  The remains of some of the original buildings in the vicarage still stand in the garden and serve as a romantic backdrop in the Walled Garden - I loved the way they had massed ferns together. Just stunning! Surrounding the walled garden and venturing out away from the house are more naturalistic plantings  - Today, the head gardener is Nick Haworth, who was previously head gardener at Greenway , which we visited earlier.  Keith Wiley lef...

Chocolate Covered Cherries Cookies



Happy Valentine's Day!

Ingredients

* 1/2 cup butter (softened)
* 1 cup white sugar
* 2 eggs
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 (10 ounce) jar maraschino cherries
* 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
* 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together in a mixer bowl. Add eggs and vanilla and beat well. Sift flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda, and baking powder together and add to the butter mixture. Roll into tablespoon sized balls and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Make an indention in each cookie with your thumb.
3. Drain cherries and reserve juice. Place a cherry in indentation of each cookie ball.
4. In a small saucepan, heat condensed milk and chocolate chips until chips are melted. Stir in 4 teaspoons of cherry juice (more if needed). Spoon about 1 teaspoon of mixture over each cherry and spread to cover cherry (or if you'd prefer the cherry to be seen, drizzle the icing in stripes).
5. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes.



Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

Comments

  1. Phillip, these look so mouth-watering. I wish you could send me some:-).

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'd love one, Phillip! A perfect ending to the day. Happy Valentine's Day :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'll have to make a batch of these for my dh. He loves chocolate covered cherries. Thanks for sharing the recipe. :) ~~Rhonda

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