Crunchy Clusters

Preheat the oven to 175 °C fan (conventional oven: 200 °C) and line two baking sheets with baking paper.

Coarsely chop the candied sweet cherries.

Split the vanilla pod lengthwise and scrape out the seeds.

Melt the butter in a saucepan.

Stir the apple juice, vanilla seeds and sugar into the melted butter until well combined.

Remove the pan from the heat and quickly stir in the flour until a homogeneous dough forms.

Gently fold in the almond flakes, chopped almonds and the cherries into the dough.

Place teaspoon-sized mounds of dough with space between them onto the baking paper.

Bake the sheets one after the other for about 10 minutes each, until the clusters are golden.

Let the cookies cool briefly on the sheet, then carefully lift them off and let them cool completely on a wire rack.