Chocolate Cherry Macadamia Cookies

These Chocolate Chip Cherry Cookies with macadamia nuts are vegan, gluten free and absolutely delicious! We love the combination of rich dark chocolate chips, tart dried cherries, buttery macadamia nuts and chewy oatmeal.

These chocolate chip cherry cookies were inspired by an old favorite of ours: white chocolate macadamia cookies. We love the nutty, sweet, buttery flavor of macadamia nuts - they're the perfect complement to a chewy cookie!

Unfortunately, there aren't many very good vegan white chocolate alternatives currently on the market. Since we strongly prefer dark chocolate to begin with, we swap white chocolate for dark in this recipe.

If you aren't vegan and prefer white chocolate chips, feel free to substitute!

When we used to make a non-vegan/gluten free version of these at home, we would always throw in a handful of dried cherries for a tart, sweet bite.

Dried cherries are a million times better than raisins (in my opinion). They have so much more flavor, and they happen to be pretty dang good for you, too.

Being from Michigan, we may also be slightly biased towards cherries - they're basically our unofficial state fruit!

When looking for dried cherries, opt for an unsweetened version if you can. Sweetened versions often contain a ridiculous amount of sugar, which is completely unnecessary, especially when you're adding them to a cookie.

They're meant to be tart! Use up the rest of the bag in a homemade snack mix, granola or just eat 'em by the handful. I love eating dried cherries with dark chocolate chips for a quick snack when I'm craving something sweet. So good and so easy!

If you aren't able to find macadamia nuts (or don't like them), you could sub with pistachios or cashews. Macadamia nuts are definitely not cheap.

They only grow in hot, dry climates and the plant takes 7 years to reach full maturity. We stock up in bulk every once in a while, but we try not to use them too quickly! They can be hard to find in store, so we usually just bulk order online.

More vegan/gluten free cookie recipes to try:

• Samoa Cookies
• Classic Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Classic Peanut Butter Cookies
• Edible Cookie Dough Bites
• Sugar Cookies

If you don't want to eat this entire batch at once, I highly suggest storing the leftovers in the freezer. Out of sight, out of mind...right? (Yeah, that mindset doesn't really work for me.)

These cookies are perfect for homemade ice cream sandwiches. They're flat and chewy, so they don't fall apart!

We highly suggest giving it a try with this cookie dough ice cream. You can use the leftover cookie dough from this recipe in the ice cream!

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