Black Forest Cookie Recipe

Instructions

1. Prepare the Butter and Sugar Base – Start by adding cold butter to your mixer bowl along with both the soft light brown sugar and caster sugar. Mix on low speed just until you have chunky, buttery nuggets – you’re not trying to cream these together like traditional cookies. You want visible chunks of butter throughout the mixture, which will create that amazing texture we’re after.
2. Add the Chocolate – Pour in your chocolate chips (if you can mix 50% and 70% dark chocolate, that’s fantastic, but any good quality chocolate will work). Mix for just a few seconds to distribute the chocolate throughout the chunky butter mixture. Don’t overmix – we want everything to stay nice and chunky.
3. Incorporate the Cherries – Roughly chop your cherries into chunky pieces – you want them substantial enough to taste in every bite. Add both the sweet glacé cherries and the tart sour cherries to the mixture and pulse for just a few seconds to distribute them evenly. If you can only find one type of cherry, don’t worry – just use 200g of whatever you can get your hands on.
4. Combine the Dry Ingredients – In a separate bowl, whisk together the plain flour, self-raising flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking powder. This pre-mixing is crucial because once we add it to our wet mixture, we want to mix as little as possible to avoid tough cookies. The black cocoa powder adds an incredible depth of flavor, but regular cocoa works perfectly fine too.
5. Create the Egg Mixture – Beat the two large eggs with the vanilla extract in a small bowl. This helps ensure even distribution when we add it to our cookie dough and prevents overmixing at this crucial stage.
6. Bring It All Together – Add the flour mixture to your chunky butter base and mix on low speed until you get a breadcrumb-like, sandy consistency. Then pour in your beaten eggs and vanilla, mixing on low speed until everything just comes together into a cohesive dough. You’ll hear your mixer change tone when it’s ready – that’s your cue to stop mixing immediately.
7. Shape and Roll in Cacao Nibs – Turn the dough out onto your work surface and portion it into 125g balls (use a kitchen scale for best results). Gently flatten each ball slightly – they don’t need to be perfect spheres. Roll each flattened cookie ball in cacao nibs, pressing gently so they stick. The cacao nibs add an amazing bitter crunch that perfectly complements the sweet cherries.
8. Freeze Before Baking – This step is absolutely crucial! Place your shaped cookies on a tray or in a container and freeze for a minimum of 2 hours, though overnight is even better. Baking from frozen is what creates that incredible contrast between the crispy exterior and gooey center that makes these cookies so special.
9. Bake to Perfection – When you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 190°C (375°F) and place your baking tray in the oven while it preheats – this hot surface will help create that perfect crispy bottom. Bake the frozen cookies for 16 minutes (14 minutes if you made smaller 100g cookies). They should have a nice crispy shell on the outside while remaining gorgeously gooey inside.

Nutrition Information (Per Cookie)