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Recipes

Chocolate Cherry Biscotti

Crisp, thoroughly rich chocolate cookies studded with bright cherries, a perfect pairing with coffee, tea, or wine.

Humu Trott

• 6 min read
Two dark brown biscotti cookies are on a plate. They are studded with chopped dried cherries and mini chocolate chips.
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Chocolate Cherry Biscotti
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Chocolate & cherries are probably my most-used flavor combo. When I decided to try making chocolate biscotti, dried cherries were going in, no thinking required. I'm not alone in loving those flavors together: of all my biscotti flavors, this is the one I run out of first.

What really sets this particular biscotti recipe apart is the chocolate, though. It has the expected cocoa powder and mini chocolate chips, but the foundation is four full ounces of baking chocolate, ground finely so it disappears right into the flour. This results in a cookie with thoroughly rich, deep chocolate flavor.

How I developed the recipe

My first attempts at this recipe were based on a chocolate espresso biscotti recipe from The Monday Box website, which in turn is based on a chocolate biscotti recipe found in the book Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy by Alice Medrich. Medrich's original recipe variation holds the genius of that ground baking chocolate.

I made my own chocolate cherry biscotti version based on that Monday Box recipe, and they were a big hit—but I suspected it could be better. The cookies were flatter than I wanted. They lacked an airy, crispy quality my other biscotti recipes had—those ones are based on a recipe found in Baking Companion by King Arthur Baking.

So I revamped, and arrived at this version, which I am very happy with indeed. It has the best of both worlds: an airy crispness and deep chocolate flavor. Its base is closer to the King Arthur biscotti, changed up considerably to include the added ground baking chocolate process, plus some other small tweaks to get the right sweetness and flavor.

Dough has been shaped into three logs, each about 2.5" wide 12" long, and an inch thick. Two are on one baking sheet, and one on another sheet.
The three logs have been baked, and they've expanded. There are fine cracks along the top.
The baked logs are sliced with a serrated knife on a diagonal, about 1/2" wide.
The slices are arranged on a baking sheet, on their sides, with about 1/4" space between them, for their second bake.

Shape, bake, slice, bake again.

How to grind the baking chocolate

Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy and The Monday Box both call for combining the baking chocolate with the flour in a food processor. I have a food processor, but it lives in the garage and I only pull it out if I absolutely have to, because I hate having to wash all of its parts. If you love using your food processor, do that!

Instead of using my food processor, I use a mini chopping bowl attachment that came with my immersion stick blender. I roughly chop the baking chocolate, then grind the chocolate up (along with the instant coffee) with only about a 1/4 cup of the flour mixture, and it works great. I stir it back into the rest of the flour mixture when it's done. You could go that route with a mini food processor, too.

Ingredient notes

I use sour cherries in most of my cooking and baking. Sweet cherries are too bland and get lost; you want the bright contrast of a sour cherry.

I buy big bags of dried tart Montmorency cherries. It's much cheaper to buy them in large quantities, they keep well, and they're handy to have on hand for all kinds of recipes. (I've even soaked them in liquid to make a sauce for pork tenderloin.)

For the chocolate, I use Guittard 64% semisweet baking chocolate, and Valrhona cocoa powder. Use whatever you like, though.

The coffee in the recipe doesn't impart a coffee flavor when it's used in small quantities, as here. Coffee makes chocolate taste more chocolatey, that's why it shows up in so many chocolate dessert recipes. Think of it as salt for chocolate. I prefer to use decaf coffee in my baking, so folks don't get a surprise hit of extra caffeine they weren't expecting. You can use either instant coffee or espresso powder.

Chocolate Cherry Biscotti

Crisp, thoroughly rich chocolate cookies studded with bright cherries, a perfect pairing with coffee, tea, or wine.

Print the recipe

Ingredients

  • 4 oz semisweet (64%) baking chocolate
  • 315 g all-purpose flour
  • 45 g cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • ¾ tsp kosher salt
  • ½ tsp decaf instant coffee
  • 4 tbsp unsalted butter (half a stick), room temperature
  • ¼ cup (46 g) vegetable shortening
  • 1 cup (200 g) sugar
  • 3 large eggs, room temperature
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • ¼ tsp almond extract
  • ¾ cup (100 g) chopped dried tart cherries
  • ¾ cup (100 g) mini chocolate chips

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 365° convection (375° conventional).
  2. Line two baking sheets with parchment.
  3. Mix flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl.
  4. Toss the dried cherries with about a half tablespoon of the flour mixture, so they don’t stick together.
  5. Chop up the baking chocolate.
  6. In a food processor, pulse the baking chocolate and instant coffee together along with some of the flour mixture—as little as ¼ cup if you’re using a mini processor, up to the whole amount in a large processor. Pulse until the baking chocolate is finely ground and blends into the flour mixture. Stir together with the rest of the flour mixture.
  7. In a large bowl, cream the sugar, butter, and shortening.
  8. Add the eggs, one at a time, incorporating well and scraping the sides of the bowl as neccessary.
  9. Beat in the vanilla and almond extract.
  10. Mix in the flour mixture, one third at a time, to make a cohesive, well-mixed but sticky dough.
  11. Stir in the chopped cherries and mini chocolate chips, ensuring they’re distributed throughout the dough.
  12. Transfer the dough onto a lightly oiled work surface. Divide it into three equal pieces. Shape each piece into a rough log.
  13. Transfer the logs to the baking sheets, two on one sheet (with at least 3” space between), one on the other. With wet fingers, smooth the logs into smooth-topped rectangles about 12” long x 2 ½” wide x 1” thick.
  14. Bake the logs for 20-22 minutes. Rotate the pans halfway through. Because the dough is dark brown, it can be tricky to tell doneness—look for the surface to be matte and have some minor cracking.
  15. Remove from the oven and let them rest for 30 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 300°. 
  16. Gently transfer the logs to a cutting surface and use a serrated knife to cut them on the diagonal into ½” wide slices. Use a slow, gentle sawing motion to cut through the inclusions. There will be some minor breakage. 
  17. Carefully transfer the slices, cut sides up, back onto the parchment-lined baking sheets. They only need about ¼” space between them, they won’t expand.
  18. Return the biscotti to the oven and bake them for 19 minutes. 
  19. Remove the pans from the oven, flip over the slices, and bake them for another 19 minutes, or until they’re very dry.
  20. Remove from the oven, cool completely.

Notes

Store at room temperature in an airtight container. Biscotti will keep for several weeks.

This recipe is a variation I created based on King Arthur Baking’s recipe, Traditional Italian Biscotti, crossed with a chocolate biscotti recipe from "Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy" by Alice Medrich via Wendy Sondov of The Monday Box.