strawberry short cookies

So, while Taneasha may feel like making muffins too soon after I've posted a muffin recipe warrants calling her muffins "cupcakes," I have no qualms whatsoever about posting another berry recipe right after hers.

I wasn't exactly planning on doing this, but there were no macamadamia nuts in the grocery story so I couldn't make the requested white chocolate macamadamia nut cookies that had been requested. What I did find was strawberries.

Cookies aren't what most people think about when looking for strawberry recipies. But, I've been working on a bit of a theme lately. I've turned raspberry tarts, carrot cake, and rocky road ice cream into cookies. Strawberry shortcake anyone?

Strawberry Short Cookies

What you need:

• 2 c diced strawberries
• 1 tbsp of lemon or orange juice
• 1 tbsp sugar

• 1/3 c cold butter
• 2 c flour
• 1/2 c sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 salt (or none if your butter is salted)
• 2/3 c cream or slightly thinned yogurt

What you gotta do:

Rinse and dice your strawberries into small pieces. It took me 13 fair sized berries to get 2 cups diced. Sprinkle the juice and sugar over the berry pieces and give them a stir. Let these sit while you do the rest.

In a big bowl, combine the sugar, flour, baking powder, (salt) and sift them together well.

Chop the butter into chunks and dump them into the bowl.

With a pastry cutter, a pair of forks, or your hand, cut/crush the butter into the flour until it looks like crumbs. If you get bored or tired of doing it before you get there, don't worry. It won't totally ruin things if you have a few bigger butter bits.

I really think the cream is a better option, but I forgot to stop on the way home to get some. I had yogurt. It's a higher fat yogurt so it still tastes good, but it's much thicker than the cream.

Okay, so here, I kinda forgot all about the taking of the pictures... mix the cream/yogurt into the flour-butter crumbs. If you're using yogurt, you may need to add a tablespoon or two of water to get those last dry bits mixed in.

Dump in the strawberry pieces and stir them in gently. Hands work. Oh look! A picture.

Drop spoonfuls onto a parchment lined cookie sheet.

Crap. Preheat the oven to 350. Go get the laundry while it heats.

Add more sugar!

If you have fancy turbinado sugar, the big crystal sugar that shows up on pastries sometimes, use it now. If you just have plain old sugar, use that. Sprinkle the cookies before you bake them. I used about half a teaspoon per dozen.

Bake the cookies for 20-22 minutes.

Yes, really that long. If you can get two sheets in the oven at once, do it. These are more of a mini scone or biscuit than cookie really, and they taste like scones with jam. But they're small like a cookie. And small things are cute. Because they're small. Because they're cute.

Name something cute that isn't small.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Perfection

Is there anything better than a chocolate chip cookie?  Crispy, chewy, gooey, chocolaty.  It’s one of the few things that can embody all of those characteristics at the same time.  To make them even better, they’re easy to make and use ingredients you probably already have on hand. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

½ cup butter
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 ½ cups flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips

Make sure your butter is very soft and put it into your mixing bowl with the sugar.  If you forgot to pull the butter out ahead of time, we have a trick for that here.  My recipe calls for sugar and molasses simply because I don’t keep brown sugar on hand.  I always have regular sugar, though, and if you just keep a bottle of molasses in the pantry, you’ll always have fresh brown sugar rather than gambling that when you pull out the bag, you might just have one big brown sugar rock.  That being said, if you have brown sugar on hand, feel free to substitute ¾ cup of it for the sugar and molasses. 

Cream together the butter and sugar until it becomes light and fluffy.  If you’re using a mixer that will probably take about 2 minutes. 

Add the vanilla and molasses.

Scrape everything down and mix until incorporated and add the egg.

Mix until thoroughly incorporated.  You can mix your dry ingredients in a separate bowl before adding them, but when I’m being lazy, I just add the flour and sprinkle the soda, powder, and salt over the top. 

Once the flour is in, you don’t want to over mix, so just enough to bring it together as a dough.  The perfect cookie dough will still be quite soft, but has just lost its stickiness.  

Add your chocolate chips.  I was on the baking aisle and these Ghirardelli mini chips caught my eye.  For some reason anything that’s miniature makes me happy.  I mean, what isn’t cuter when made small?  You can use whatever size chips you want, though. 

Stir them in so they’re fairly evening distributed.  I know it looks good enough to eat just as it is, but my mom always taught me to not eat things with raw eggs in them, and it stuck.  So I’ll pass, but help yourself if you want, but I promise it’ll be better once they’re baked anyway. 

Using a spoon, scoop the dough and scrape it off the spoon onto a parchment lined cookie sheet, leaving plenty of room for them to spread.

I wanted fairly large cookies, so I used a generous rounded tablespoon.  You can make them whatever size you like, you’ll just want to watch them and adjust the baking time. 

When they’re all scooped, pop the pan into the freezer for 15 minutes.  While they’re in there, preheat your oven to 375° At this point, if you don’t want to bake all of your cookies, simply scoop and freeze all of the dough.  (I did these ones smaller)

Then just pop the dough balls into a bag and back into the freezer.  That way you can have fresh cookies whenever the mood strikes.  Just pull out however many you want, preheat your oven, and bake them. 

After the cookies you’re going to bake have been in the freezer for 15 minutes, pull them out and bake them for 14 – 17 minutes if they’re this size.  If they’re smaller, decrease the time, and just watch them.  They should be just starting to brown around the edges and no longer look wet on top. 

This will create the perfect crispy exterior and chewy interior everyone loves about chocolate chip cookies.  They’ll be sort of puffy when you first pull them out of the oven, but will quickly settle. 

Leave them on the pan to cool for a few minutes, and then transfer them to a rack.  If you can get them there, anyway.  I’m pretty sure one will find its way into your mouth on the way. 

Definitely serve with a glass of milk, then just close your eyes and treat yourself to some chocolate chip cookie paradise. 

What cooking lesson did you learn from Mom when you were growing up?