17 Chocolate Cherry Desserts: Cakes, Cookies, Dump Cakes, and More

Top Tips

1. Drain canned cherries well before using them in baked goods. Excess liquid from canned pie filling or cherry juice will make cake batter wet and affect both the texture and the bake time. Draining and patting with paper towels takes an extra minute but makes a real difference in the finished result.
2. Add cherries last when mixing into cookie or cake batter. Cherries, especially maraschino or canned versions, have a tendency to bleed their color throughout the batter if overmixed. Folding them in gently at the end keeps the distribution even without turning everything pink.
3. For dump cakes, don’t stir the layers together after dumping. The layered approach is what creates the contrast between a cakey top and a saucy fruit base, and mixing it collapses both. Dump, even out gently if needed, and bake without combining.
4. Chocolate and cherry pair best when the chocolate is slightly bitter. Very sweet milk chocolate tends to get lost against the sweetness of cherries, while a darker chocolate or cocoa with more depth holds its own in the dessert. Most recipes in this collection will taste better with a quality cocoa powder or chocolate that has some bitterness.
5. Cool completely before frosting or glazing cherry chocolate cakes. Cherry juice and chocolate both tend to make frostings softer and more prone to melting, which means even a slightly warm cake will cause the topping to slip. A full cool on a wire rack, and 20 minutes in the refrigerator if the kitchen is warm, gives the best result.