Almond Shortbread Cookies with Chocolate and Cherries

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These almond shortbread cookies with chocolate and cherries are packed with almond extract, semi-sweet chocolate, dried tart cherries, and sweet buttery goodness. Shortbread is one of the easiest cookies to make. Just be sure to set aside a few for yourself before your friends and family devour the rest!

Why You’ll Love These Shortbread Cookies

So incredibly easy to make. These cookies don’t require any fancy techniques or much finesse, making this a great beginner-friendly recipe.
Elegant flavors and simple ingredients. This all-butter shortbread is the perfect balance of buttery and mildly sweet. The almond flavor feels elegant and familiar, and it pairs well with the chocolate and cherries.
Great make-ahead dessert option. You can make the cookie dough, roll it into a log, slice it into individual cookie rounds, then bake it off later. You can even slice off the amount of cookies you want to bake now, then pop the rest of the dough into the freezer for whenever your cookie craving hits!
Ideal for holiday gifting or your own enjoyment. Add these to your holiday sweet treat gift boxes (along with some Gingerbread Muddy Buddies and Chocolate Peppermint Fudge), or enjoy them all yourself!

Stack of almond shortbread cookies on a plate with snowflake lights in the background.

Ingredients in Almond Shortbread Cookies with Chocolate and Cherries

Butter – use salted butter for better balance and flavor.
Sugar – granulated (white) sugar works best.
Flour – you’ll need all-purpose flour. Be sure to measure it by weight or with the spooned and leveled method.
Almond extract – for a nutty almond flavor. If you’re allergic to nuts, you can leave this out and replace it with vanilla instead.
Semisweet chocolate – for sweet and slightly bitter chocolate notes.
Dried cherries – these provide a fruity flavor and subtle tartness.
Salt (optional) – if you’re using unsalted butter, you’ll want to add about ¼ tsp salt.

How to Make These Almond Shortbread Cookies

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl using a whisk, hand mixer, or stand mixer. Mix in the almond extract.

A grid of 4 photos each showing part of the process of making the shortbread dough, including adding the butter and sugar to a bowl, mixing them together, adding the flour, then mixing that in.

Mix in the flour and salt (if using) until almost fully incorporated, then mix in the chocolate and cherries.

Pour the dough out onto a surface and press it together into a log about 12 inches long and 3 inches wide. Wrap it in parchment or wax paper and chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour or up to overnight. Alternatively, you could roll the dough out into a ½ inch thick sheet and cut it into squares or circles with a cookie cutter, then chill it in the fridge.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Remove the dough from the fridge. If it’s too firm to cut, let it rest on the counter for a couple of minutes so that it softens slightly.
Slice the cookie dough log into discs about ½ inch thick. If the dough cracks a little when you slice it, just form it back into cookies.

Shortbread cookie dough shaped into a log and partially sliced into cookie rounds.

Bake the cookies for 16 to 19 minutes, or until you can just see the bottom edges of the cookies turning golden brown. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool completely before eating.

Our Tips for Making Almond Shortbread Cookies with Chocolate and Cherries

Rachel and Emily from Cooking with Conks, standing side-by-side in green and yellow aprons.

Cut the chocolate into very small pieces or shavings. This will help them incorporate better in the cookie dough and make the dough log easier to cut into individual cookies.
Chill the dough before baking. This helps firm up the butter. This is a vital step in making shortbread that is rich, firm, and snappy. If you don’t chill the dough, the butter will leak out more, the cookies will spread, and they won’t have the signature crispy texture of classic shortbread.

Use salted butter. We know, we know. Many bakers and cooks swear by using unsalted butter for everything. And in many situations, we find that it’s up to personal preference. But these shortbread cookies really benefit from a little salty, buttery flavor. Otherwise, they’ll get too sweet. If you absolutely have to use unsalted butter, add some salt to the cookie dough (¼ to ½ tsp).
For crispier cookies, don’t slice them too thick. We like our shortbread to be a perfect balance of crispy and slightly soft. To achieve that texture, we slice the cookie dough log into ½ inch thick cookies. If you want your shortbread to have a crispier texture, more similar to British biscuits, then you can slice them into ¼ inch thick cookies. Just note that by doing so, you’ll need to reduce the cooking time because they’ll bake (and potentially burn) more quickly when they’re thinner.
Be careful not to overbake the almond shortbread cookies. Shortbread doesn’t usually get brown in color on top, so you’ll need to pay attention to the color around the edges of the cookie as well as the timing to determine doneness. The fully baked top surface of the cookies will still look pale, but the cookies should look set and the edges around the bottom of the cookies should look slightly golden.

A hand holding an almond shortbread cookie to the camera.

Variations and Swaps

Skip the almond extract entirely (especially if someone has an allergy to almond).
Swap dried cherries for dried cranberries or dried blueberries.
Substitute white, dark, or milk chocolate for the semisweet.
Add sliced almonds on top of the cookies before baking them.
Dip part of the cookie in melted chocolate.

Serving and Storage Instructions

We like to enjoy these cookies as an after-dinner treat with decaf coffee or herbal tea. They’re also great to add to cookie boxes.

To store baked cookies, place them into an airtight container for up to 4 to 5 days for best results. Any longer and they may get soft and stale.

For unbaked cookies, you can slice the whole log up, wrap it in parchment paper, place the dough in a zip-top bag in the fridge overnight, then bake off individual cookies the next day. You can also freeze the whole dough log and bake off a cookie at a time whenever you need your dose of almond, chocolate, and cherries. To bake them from frozen, you may need to add an extra minute or so to the baking time.

An almond shortbread cookie cut in half and on a plate, with the halves stacked on each other and facing the camera. More cookies in the background.

FAQs: Almond Shortbread Cookies

Absolutely! We love the combination of almond, chocolate, and cherries, but if you’re allergic to nuts or just don’t like almond extract, you can use vanilla instead.

No, we don’t recommend using fresh cherries in these cookies because they’ll make the shortbread too wet, which will cause them to lose their soft crispy texture.

Shortbread can crumble or fall apart when it’s too dry, so be sure to use the right amount of flour and butter. If you’re measuring flour by volume, don’t scoop it with a measuring cup or you’ll get too much flour. Use the “spoon and level” method, which involves adding spoonfuls of flour to a measuring cup and then leveling it off. Otherwise, the flour can get too packed and dense and you’ll end up using much more than the recipe calls for. For example, 2 ¼ cups of flour using the spoon and level method is approximately the same as 2 cups of flour using the scoop method of scooping the measuring cup into the flour directly. Learn more about flour measuring methods here.

Yes, you can freeze the cookie dough. We recommend wrapping the cookie dough log in parchment and then placing it in a freezer safe bag or container in the freezer for up to 3 months. When you’re ready to bake cookies, slice them off (or bonus points for having pre-sliced the log before) and place them directly in the oven. You may need to bake them for a couple minutes longer than the recipe says.

Watch the Video Here

A stack of almond shortbread cookies with chocolate and cherries.

Ingredients

1 cup salted butter, softened (2 sticks) (227g)
½ cup granulated sugar (100g)
1 tsp almond extract note: this can be replaced with vanilla extract if you’re allergic to nuts
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour spoon & level (281g)
½ cup chopped semi-sweet chocolate (2 ½ ounces or 71g)
½ cup chopped dried unsweetened cherries (80g)
½ tsp salt (only if using unsalted butter instead of salted)

Instructions

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl using a whisk, hand mixer, or stand mixer. Mix in the almond extract.
1 cup salted butter, softened (2 sticks), ½ cup granulated sugar, 1 tsp almond extract
Mix in the flour until almost fully incorporated. If you're using unsalted butter, mix in the salt now too. Then mix in the chocolate and cherries.
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour, ½ cup chopped semi-sweet chocolate, ½ tsp salt (only if using unsalted butter instead of salted), ½ cup chopped dried unsweetened cherries
Pour the dough out onto a surface and press it together into a log about 12 inches long and 3 inches wide. Wrap it in parchment or wax paper and chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour or up to overnight. Alternatively, you could roll the dough out into a ½ inch thick sheet and cut it into squares or circles with a cookie cutter, then chill it in the fridge.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Remove the dough from the fridge. If it’s too firm to cut, let it rest on the counter for a couple of minutes so that it softens slightly.
Slice the cookie dough log into discs about ½ inch thick. If the dough cracks a little when you slice it, just form it back into cookies.
Bake the cookies for 16 to 19 minutes, or until you can just see the bottom edges of the cookies turning golden brown. Remove the cookies from the oven and let them cool completely before eating.

Notes

Tips

Cut the chocolate into very small pieces or shavings. This will help it incorporate into the dough and make the dough easier to cut.
Chill the dough before baking to prevent cookies from spreading and butter from leaking out.
Use salted butter for more flavor. If not using salted butter, add 1/2 tsp salt to the cookie dough.
For crispier cookies, don’t slice them too thick. But be careful with the bake time because they can burn more quickly if they’re thin.
Be careful not to overbake the almond shortbread cookies. Shortbread doesn’t usually get brown in color on top, so you’ll need to pay attention to the color around the edges of the cookie as well as the timing to determine doneness.

Final Thoughts

These are one of our favorite simple cookies, especially when the weather gets cold and gray. If you make these almond shortbread cookies, we’d love to hear how they turned out. Leave a comment or tag us on Instagram!