When your cookie dough has chilled and you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F., and make sure the rack is in the middle position. DO NOT take your chilled cookie dough out of the refrigerator until after your oven has reached the proper temperature.

While your oven is preheating, prepare your cookie sheets by spraying them with Pam or another nonstick baking spray, or lining them with parchment paper.

Place the confectioner’s sugar in a small, shallow bowl. You will be dropping cookie dough into this bowl to form dough balls and coating them with the powdered sugar.

When your oven is ready, take your dough out of the refrigerator. Using a teaspoon from your silverware drawer, drop the dough by rounded teaspoonful into the bowl with the powdered sugar. Roll the dough around with your fingers to form powdered-sugar-coated cookie dough balls.

Hannah’s 2nd Note: This is easiest if you coat your fingers with powdered sugar first and then try to form the cookie dough into balls.

Place the coated cookie dough balls on your prepared cookie sheets, no more than 12 cookies on a standard-size sheet.

If you haven’t already done so, cut your maraschino cherries in half and place one half, rounded side up, on top of each cookie ball on your baking sheet.

Hannah’s 3rd Note: I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Work with only one cookie dough ball at a time. If you drop more than one in the bowl of powdered sugar, they’ll stick together.

Andrea’s Note: Make only as many cookie dough balls as you can bake at one time and then cover the dough and return it to the refrigerator. I have a double oven so I prepare 2 sheets of cookies at a time.

Bake your Red Velvet Whippersnapper Cookies at 350 degrees F., for 10 to 12 minutes. Test for doneness by tapping them lightly with a finger to see if they’re “set.”

Let your cookies cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes, and then move them to a wire rack to cool completely. (This is a lot easier if you line your cookie sheets with parchment paper—then you don’t need to lift the cookies one by one. All you have to do is grab one end of the parchment paper and pull it, cookies and all, onto the wire rack.)

Once the cookies are completely cool, store them between sheets of waxed paper in a cool, dry place. (Your refrigerator is cool, but it’s definitely not dry!)

Yield: 3 to 4 dozen soft, chewy cookies with little nuggets of chocolate inside. Yield will depend on cookie size.

Chapter Two

Chapter Two