These Vintage Black Forest Christmas Cookies Are Surprisingly Easy
Black Forest Christmas Cookie
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Internet has dubbed the '90s “vintage” (I know). Baggy jeans are back, Blink-182 is on the oldies station and recipes from our childhood are slowly making a comeback. Case in point: black forest cookies have become popular yet again.
While browsing Reddit, I recently stumbled upon a recipe for Black Forest Christmas Cookies that was published in 1990. The ingredients are simple, the presentation is elegant, and much like that “jeans and a nice top” ensemble you love, they’re sure to get you compliments at your next soirée.
To make sure these treats were as good as they sounded, I needed to give them a try. Here's what happened when I made this 90s-era treat in my kitchen.
Get the recipe: Black Forest Christmas Cookies
Courtesy of Jessica Wrubel
Ingredients For Black Forest Christmas Cookies
For these cookies, you’re going to need flour, baking powder, salt, one stick of unsalted butter, light brown sugar, granulated sugar, large eggs, almond extract, unsweetened chocolate and canned pitted sweet cherries.
How to Make Black Forest Christmas Cookies
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Don’t skip this step—sifting creates a lighter cookie that won't be heavy and dense. Set aside the dry ingredients.
Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and almond extract until the mixture is light and lemon colored. Melt the unsweetened chocolate and add to the wet ingredients. Stir in the flour mixture, mixing just to blend, then refrigerate the dough for one hour.
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Preheat the oven to 350° and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a slicone baking mat. Take a heaping tablespoon of dough, make an indentation in the center and insert a cherry. Shape the dough around the cherry and place the cookies an inch apart on the baking sheets. Bake until the tops are puffed and just beginning to crack, 10 to 12 minutes.
Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool, then store in an airtight container for up to one week. The original recipe says it makes 36 to 40 cookies, but my recipe only made two dozen.
Courtesy of Jessica Wrubel
What I Thought of the Black Forest Christmas Cookies
I love a good chocolatey cookie and I also love almond, so these cookies definitely delivered. They were soft on the inside, but had a decent chew on the outside. There is a hefty amount of almond extract in these, so you will taste it, but it's not overpowering. The cherry in the center is a nice little surprise and makes for the best bite. They're easy to make and have a nostalgic feel thanks to the chocolate, cherry and almond combo.
Related: 200+ Christmas Cookie Ideas Your Family Will Love This Holiday
Tips for Making the Black Forest Christmas Cookies
Don't add the cherry on top. Make sure to completely encase the cherry within the dough. I tried placing the cherries on top in my second batch as an experiment and they didn't come out the same. The cherry and its juice ran off the cookie and they looked pretty unappetizing as a result.
Refrigerate your dough. Be sure to refrigerate the dough for an hour as the instructions say. If you chill it for too long the dough will be dry and crumbly, which makes it hard to work with. The dough should be chilled, but still very malleable so it's easy to wrap it around the cherries.
Grab the right fruit. Make sure that you grab cherries from the canned fruit aisle of the grocery store and not cherry pie filling from the baking aisle. You want whole cherries inside the cookie. Cherry pie filling has lots of gooey gel and other ingredients you don't need for this recipe.
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