Chocolate Cherry Ripe Cookies For My Father

I’ve never been shy about expressing my love for the people I care about. This might have stemmed from a chapter of Sideways Stories from Westside School, in which a boy discovers that when you tell someone that you love them, you yourself fill to the brim with even more love that you felt before.

Yet while I’m personally happy to tell members of my family, outright, that I love them, perhaps when we’re in the middle of watching SeaChange or after they’ve made me feel like I’m not a failure at life, I recognise that some people are more comfortable showing rather than stating their emotions.

Here are three ways in which my dad has made me feel loved:

1. When I was three, my family and I went to a local river for a picnic. My dad was carefully watching me splash around in the shallows, but turned around for a brief minute or so to attend to my brother (who was probably doing something like sticking food up his nose*). When dad turned back to me, I was lying, face-down, in the water.

(Apparently, I’d decided it was too much of a bother to figure out how to get this “oxygen” people speak of.)

Dad dashed into the water and pulled me out, thus avoiding a rather big calamity.

If that’s not love, what is?

2. When I was eight, I wanted a doll’s house. Would my dad stoop to simply buying me a pre-made one? No, he would not. My dad ordered the design for a complex doll’s house from the magical world of the internet (it was rather magical in those days), and set to building the house from scratch.

Would my dad stoop to simply creating a bare-bones, run-of-the-mill doll’s house for his daughter? No, he would not. That man built a multiple-storied gorgeous palace with staircases between floors and a front porch complete with columns, and then he spent weeks – weeks, I tell you – gluing tiny individual overlapping shingles onto the roof, then lacquering them for a shiny finish. And then he spent more weeks – weeks, I tell you - installing wiring for lighting into the doll’s house. My plastic people were never going to have to fear the dark.

Sure, the doll’s house never moved out of the construction stage, but you know what? Columns. And hundreds of roof shingles. And electric lighting.

If that’s not love, what is?

3. When I was twenty-two and a mere month away from completing my 28,000-word Honours thesis, I somehow installed a virus in my laptop and thought I’d lost most of my work. Despite the fact that dad had constantly reminded me to back-up my computer over the course of the year, he barely even said “I told you so” before spending four days straight fixing the entire computer and salvaging my work.

If that’s not love, what is?

With memories like that in mind, I decided to reciprocate my dad’s affection and faith in me by baking him a bunch of cookies for Fathers Day. Cookies made with one of his favourite chocolate/candy bars, no less.

So, Dad? Thank you for everything. And Happy Fathers Day, again.

Chocolate Cherry Ripe Cookies for A Computer-Whiz, Carpenter-ish, Creek-Fording Father.

Makes 25-30 depending on size. Adapted from The Australian Women’s Weekly Biscuits and Slices Mini Cookbook.

• 1 1/3 cup (200g) dark chocolate melts
• 60g butter
• 1/4 cup (60ml) vegetable oil
• 1/3 cup (75g) caster sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten lightly
• 1 cup (150g) self-raising flour
• 1 cup (150g) plain flour
• 3 x 85g (King-Size) Cherry Ripe bars, chopped
• 3/4 cup (110g) dark chocolate melts, extra
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, extra

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease several baking trays.
2. Combine dark chocolate melts, butter, oil and sugar in a medium saucepan, and stir over low heat until everything is melted and combined. Cool to room temperature.
3. Stir in beaten eggs, flours, and two-thirds of the chopped Cherry Ripe bars.
4. Roll heaped tablespoons of mixture into balls, placing about 3cm apart on the baking trays. Bake for about 15 minutes until browned lightly, then cool cookies on wire racks.
5. Spread tops of cookies with the combined extra melted chocolate melts and oil, and sprinkle  with the remaining chopped Cherry Ripe bars. Present to your father with a big grin, a hug, and an outright or implicit “I Love You”. (Awww… Hallmark moment!)

* Oh, the stories I could tell.

Tagged as: Cherry Ripe, Chocolate Cherry Ripe Cookies, cookies, dad