Chocolate Crackles were always included on the plates of Christmas cookies my mom put together every year for her friends, coworkers, and relatives. I’ve always loved their crackled appearance and chewy texture so I like to continue the tradition and include them on my Christmas cookie plates as well. But this year I decided to change up the plain chocolate cookie recipe a bit by adding chopped dried tart cherries and extra chocolate chips to the dough.

If you’re not one to mess with tradition, you can easily leave the cherries and extra chocolate chips out of the recipe and they will be a traditional chocolate crackle (also sometimes known as chocolate crinkle). The recipe was passed down from my mom but I’m not sure of the original source. It’s a very popular cookie around these parts and I’ve seen the identical recipe in local community cookbooks as well as online.

I baked a few batches of these cookies a bit early this year in order to participate in the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, a fun blogging event where food bloggers get paired up with other food bloggers and send and receive fresh-baked cookies through the mail. I mailed out a dozen cookies to three different people and then received cookies from three others. It was a fun and delicious way to participate in the food blogging community. Another great thing about the food blogger cookie swap is that it raises money for Cookies for Kids’ Cancer, a national non-profit organization committed to funding new therapies used in the fight against pediatric cancer, which claims the lives of more children in the US than any other disease.