I’m so excited to share this cookie recipe with you! These cherry crumble cookies are the perfect combination of sweet, tart, and buttery. They are not only delicious, but they’re also so easy to make!
Great way to utilize jams and preserves
Have you ever struggled to use up all the jams and preserves that you stock up on? Or is it just me? I buy jams and preserves from the grocery store with full intention of making more sandwiches and other things with them. Alas, I always end up forgetting I have them. Sure they last a while, but I don’t like the idea of jams just sitting there too long without getting some love.
For Valentine’s Day, I ended up making a fancy dinner for me and my husband. I made a wine-reduction sauce, which utilized cherry preserves, to accompany our entreé that night. As you can imagine, I only needed a small amount of the cherry preserves for the sauce. And now, I had almost a full jar of it left, so I thought I should find an easy way to use it up. However, I also didn’t feel like working too hard to come up with a solid recipe just to use these preserves.
Enter these cherry crumble cookies. I thought a shortbread-y base type of cookie is the perfect vehicle to balance out the tartness of the cherry preserves. And sure enough, they ended up tasting so good together. If you don’t like cherry, feel free to use other types of jams or preserves. Just make sure they have enough tartness, otherwise, it’ll make the cookies too sweet.
Make sure your muffin pans are greased enough!
So I’ve tried to make these cherry crumble cookies using a cupcake liner to make cleanup easier. However, the cherry preserves ended up sticking too much to the liner sides. It ended up being really difficult to release the cookies from the liners. So, I highly recommend just using the muffin pans without the liners — but make sure you grease them enough, especially the sides. You can either brush the inside of each with melted butter, or use one of those butter sprays.
Tools you’ll need
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup salted butter, cubed
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 3 tbsp powdered sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp almond extract
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup cherry preserves
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- In a food processor, combine the flour, salted butter, sugar, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and almond extract. Pulse until you get a sandy shortbread mixture.
- With a small ice cream scooper (~1.5 tbsp), scoop the shortbread mixture into each greased "cup" of a muffin pan. With the bottom of a small cup or a small spoon, press the shortbread mixture into the muffin cups so it compacts tightly together. You should hae some sandy shortbread mixture left in the food processor -- you'll use those for crumbles.
- Add 1 tbsp of cherry preserves on top of your shortbread base, leaving a bit of space around the edges.
- Going back to the remaining sandy shortbread mixture in the food processor, lightly squeeze them so that you form some varying sizes of chunks and crumbles. Evenly distribute the crumbles on top of the cherry preserves on the muffin pan.
- Bake closer to the top rack for about 25-30 minutes. The crumble topping should be between light to golden brown.
- After it bakes, let it cool for about 20-30 minutes before removing from the muffin pan. Otherwise, the shortbread base might break too easily as it's fragile at this point. If the preserves have also stuck too much on the sides, run a butter knife along the edges to carefully remove each cookie. Enjoy!
