Chocolate cherry muffins

I had trouble choosing whether or not these would be chocolate cherry muffins or cherry chocolate muffins, but since two kinds of chocolate are in these - Mr. Chocolate gets first billing.

For these bad mama jammas you may omit the sherry and still get good results although it does boost the cherry into a more complex, lovely realm with it added.  Really though, who has sherry unless you are a nerd?  Imagine a neon arrow pointing in my direction and on it, it might say "I know you are, but what am I?".  After all, I spend my time drooling while recalling recipes (not a joke, I've had a mishap or two) and waltzing aimlessly into SALT stores (also not a joke, stores that carry ALL MANNER OF SALTS!) so sherry you'd think would have been on my shelf long ago, but nope - I bought it last week because I wanted to see what it was about and then tried it in a couple of recipes.  This one yielded the most pleasing results.

I once tried these muffins with dried cherries and I must say being exhausted and working with both baking cocoa and dried fruit is a terrible idea.  Doing so practically guarantees your food will be careless (as I was) and the results even tasted careless.  IF you choose to use dried cherries, I recommend using either a tiny bit of hot water to plump them up (heat water... just enough for cherries to sit in while putting together other ingredients) OR you can use lightly-heated oil and put them into that.  I didn't use any of those methods for these muffins. I used frozen cherries which I had picked from my soon to be mother-in-law's cherry trees last summer.

1 and 1/2 Cup Whole Wheat flour (I use Bob's red mill organic ww)
1 TBSP cinnamon (cassia is fine)
2 TBSP + 1 tsp baking cocoa powder (I use Equal Exchange)
shallow 1/2 cup of chocolate chips (I used Sunspire semi-sweet you can use Dagoba Dark is you prefer)
1 cup - heaping cup of cherries (if frozen set them in a low dish and add sherry to the dish over the top of them, let this sit while you work on the rest of the batter and come back to them)
3 TBSP rosso {the red}Martini Rossi sherry for the cherries (you wont become an alcoholic from baking with alcohol it bakes OUT and leaves just the wonderful notes and characters that are in it minus the inebriation, you'd have an easier time getting drunk from cough syrup than raw muffin batter) You can use cherry based wine instead - if you know of any that treat you well.
1/2 cup not packed but heaping light brown sugar
1/2 cup whichever favorite sugar (I used vegan sugar, you can use evaporated cane, raw or natural)
3 eggs
3/4 cup olive oil
350 for 20-24 minutes

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  If using fresh or frozen cherries put them into a shallow bowl and cover with (in this order) sherry, sugars, 3 eggs pre-beaten and leave to mingle on its own while you prep the rest.  In a mixing bowl, put your flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, baking cocoa and chocolate chips, and finger blend.  Back to the cherries... mix these with a little tossing and add 3/4 cup olive oil and spatula scrape this into your flour and blend well until everything makes a smooth rich cinnamon chocolate color.  I use a 1/4 cup scoop to scoop batter into paper lined muffin tins and this made 18 average sized muffins.

20-24 minutes until done.  In my electric oven (I miss the gas stove!) in Portland, Oregon it takes 22 minutes to perfection. For those of you in the Alps, I don't know what it takes so just poke it early and eat it when it is perfect!

Oh my!