Strawberry White Chocolate Cookies
By: Jo Cullen
Tags: Recipes, Bakery, Cookies, Baking

Packed with real strawberry flavour and white chocolate chips, these cookies don’t require any extracts or flavourings to give that true strawberry taste!

Full recipe: https://bakerjo.co.uk/strawberry-white-chocolate-cookies/

I’ve actually been working on a classic chocolate chip cookie recipe over the last few weeks, which I’ll be posting soon. Today’s cookies were developed from that recipe, but I felt I had to post these first as they are perfect for Valentine’s Day!

This recipe was much more challenging than I was expecting, mainly due to wanting to flavour them naturally with real strawberry flavour. No extracts or flavourings here!

My first few test batches involved the use of strawberry jam, but no matter how much jam I added, the flavour was non-existent. I did consider reducing some real strawberries down to make a purée but worried the moisture would prevent a chunky cookie. Then I considered what turned out to be the winning ingredient — freeze-dried strawberries!

This suddenly made so much sense! They are real strawberries with the authentic flavour I was after, and by blending them in my food processor they turned into strawberry dust which incorporated brilliantly into my cookie dough. It took a few batches to work out exactly how much strawberry dust I needed but I got there. I’m so happy with them!

Don’t get freeze-dried and dried strawberries confused! We’re not using the soft, jelly-like strawberries here. I was a little concerned about the ease of finding this ingredient as I want this recipe to be user-friendly. I bought a large bag from Amazon as I needed a lot for recipe testing. But after some research, I found freeze-dried strawberries are available in supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Tesco, usually in 7g packs. I’ve found the cheapest to be Tesco, where I found 7g packs for £1 each (I’m not sponsored by Tesco, just want to save you some money!). However, I bought a 100g bag from Amazon for around £10, and it has a good expiry date. So if you think you’ll use them for other things (great sprinkled on cereal!) then this may be more cost effective for you!

Let’s talk about the actual texture of these cookies. I wanted a slightly chunky cookie with a soft, chewy centre. The edges are slightly crisp though which I personally love. I’ll talk more about my cookie development process in an upcoming post!

My recipe uses only egg yolks and no whites, to help with the chewiness. I also use some cornflour which makes a softer cookie. I haven’t used any vanilla extract here as I felt it was interfering with the strawberry flavour. Bicarbonate of soda helps to leaven the cookie which also makes it a bit thicker and softer. Creaming the butter and sugar helps with this too. Then just a touch of salt to bring out the flavours and just enough sugar to not make them overly sweet!

Oh, one more thing. The dough doesn’t require any chilling before baking! These cookies come together so quickly, you could make a few batches before Valentine’s Day. To test them out, right?

I find two level tablespoons of dough makes the perfect medium sized cookie. You could add an extra tablespoon for a bigger cookie, but remember it may need one or two more minutes in the oven.

In terms of adding colour to these cookies, I definitely recommend only using gel food colouring. If you use a liquid type you risk ruining the consistency of the dough. This will result in a flatter, thinner cookie. For my batch, I dipped a cocktail stick in my red gel food colouring once and it gave a pale pink colour. I did test it with three cocktail sticks of colouring and they were more of a hot pink colour! I love the subtle pastel colour but feel free to go bolder! The strawberry dust will add some colour too so just keep that in mind when adding your gel colouring.

So, to summarise, these cookies are:

Soft and slightly chewy with a crisp edge

Full of real strawberry flavour

Packed with white chocolate chips

Quick and easy to make

Ready to bake straight away without chilling the dough

A perfect Valentines Day treat!

I hope you love them as much as I do!

Find my recipe at https://bakerjo.co.uk/strawberry-white-chocolate-cookies/