Sour Cream Filled Chocolate Cherry Cookies

These are one of my new favorite cookies! So yummy! They come from Anna at Cookie Madness . Thanks, Anna, for sharing your creation!

I did make a few changes. I used tart cherries since that's what I found. Then the recipe as written yields 16 BIG cookies, but I wanted to share them with friends so I made 4 dozen out of the one batch. So they were a lot smaller and cooked faster. Since I had more than two cookie sheets going in once some were done, the whole changing the oven temperature part of the recipe didn't work for me. I just baked them at 335º for about 8-10 minutes. It worked for me. Also, I doubled the filling, but that was only enough for 3 dozen of the 4 dozen cookies. Next time I'll triple it, just for my taste. I probably used too much filling. Also I didn't have bleached flour so mine aren't as pretty and fat as Anna's. These are fudgy cookies with a delicious topping!
Sour Cream Filled Chocolate Cherry Cookies

1/2 c. butter, room temperature
1 1/4 c. plus 3 tablespoons sugar
2 lg. eggs
1 t. vanilla extract
1/2 c. plus 2 T. Hershey’s dark cocoa powder
2 1/4 c. bleached all-purpose flour (bleached makes for fatter cookies)
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. baking powder
1 c. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips
Filling:
1/4 c. regular cold sour cream (not light)
1 t. egg yolk
2 1/2 t. sugar
3/4 t. flour
1/3 c. dried sour cherries, chopped (more or less)

Cream butter and sugar until well-blended; Add eggs and vanilla and beat just until incorporated. Scrape sides of bowl and beat in cocoa powder, then scrape sides of bowl again making sure everything is well mixed.In a separate bowl, thoroughly stir together flour, salt and baking powder. Stir the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips. Chill dough for 1 hour or more.

Prepare filling. Mix together sour cream, egg yolk, sugar and flour. Stir in the cherries.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Divide dough in half. Keep half the dough chilled and shape remaining dough into 8 equally sized balls. Working one dough ball at a time, mold a large hole in the dough and fill it with about a teaspoon of the sour cream mixture. Do this with 8 balls of dough and arrange them a few inches apart on the cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 for 8 minutes. Without opening oven, reduce heat to 325 and bake for another 8 minutes or until cookies appear set. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool.
While one batch cookies, make remaining 8 cookies.