Photo by Eric Keith / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

Alexis Bremer is the winner of our Holiday Candy Recipe Contest with her chocolate-covered cherry cookies.

Alexis Bremer of St. Joseph will make about 1,000 of her chocolate-covered cherry cook­ies before Christmas. It only took 12 tiny ones for her to be declared the winner of the 2008 News-Press Holiday Candy Recipe Contest.

Of course, she had to make a dozen more for the photo.

“I just made 120 of these bad boys,” she says, handing over a red box filled with her winning entry. “I have a Christmas party at work.”

Of all the entries, Ms. Bremer’s won by a landslide. For those people who would argue that the winning entry isn’t really candy, the judges (myself included) disagree. Dainty and rich (and chocolate, which impressed the judges), the cherry-topped cookies tasted more like candy.

Really good candy. One bite was all it took to fin­ish it off. You can’t do that with most cookies.

“They’re very easy to make,” Ms. Bremer says.

The chocolate cookie is topped with a brandy-laced filling, which is crowned with a maraschino cherry.

Melted chocolate is then drizzled over the top.

“The combination of flavors was quite daz­zling,” another judge says. “The chocolate wasn’t too sweet, and the cookie was just right.”

The judges weren’t the only ones impressed with Ms. Bremer’s entry. Besides those 1,000 she’ll make for the holidays (Christmas gifts for her co-workers), she also makes several batches as birthday gifts for some of her co-workers.

The chocolate-covered cherry cookies aren’t an original recipe. Like many cooks — and past recipe contest winners — Ms. Bremer found the recipe in a magazine. She then started experi­menting, changing something here and adding something else there. One change she made was to decrease the amount of eggs the original recipe called for.

“I added a little more of the brandy,” she says of another change she made.

And that brandy helps give the cookies a distinctive taste. That, and the cherry.

“The cherry is a big part,” she says.

One judge says that neither the cherry nor the chocolate was over­whelming.

A couple of the other judges agree that even when removing the cherry (not everyone likes them), the entry was still a winner.

Ms. Bremer says she’ll probably use her $100 grand prize to purchase the ingredients for her an­nual baking day. An avid cook, she schedules a day­long baking session with family and friends as the holidays approach. And it’s probably a good bet she’ll be mixing up several batches of those chocolate­covered cherry cookies.

Now, she can add award­winning to the name.

Lifestyles reporter Cathy Woolridge can be reached at cathyw@npgco.com