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.

Variations on a Theme

So, we’re getting close to the end of the semester; midterms are done. I’m really looking forward to the end of this year. I’ve had just about enough of school already and being done this year means I’ve only got (hopefully) two more to go.

It also means that the guys at work are going to get their weekly dose of cookies.

The new cubes we have at work (yes, I’m in a cube; I can’t wait until summer when I can work on site again – I much prefer a construction trailer to a spot in a cube farm) each have their own whiteboards, and mine of course has a “Cookie Requests” spot. The estimators have been hounding me for peanut butter, and the accountants have been begging for creamsicle cookies.

I don’t know what it is about peanut butter cookies, but people seem to want them more than other kind of cookie. Whenever I ask for suggestions on what to make, I’m bound to have at least 2 people tell me “peanut butter.”

I don’t like peanut butter cookies. At all. Never have, never will. I conceded last summer and made a peanut butter oatmeal no-bake cookie for them (I’m not fond of oatmeal either and thought I’d kill two birds with one stone), and while they were well received, I was getting requests for more peanut butter the next week! These people are insatiable.

So, I know I’m just going to keep getting hassled by these peabutt nutters, and I’m hoping I can hold them off for a while with a variation.

Almond Butter Cookies

What you need:

• ¾ c butter
• ¾ c almond butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla/almond extract/amaretto liqueur
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 ¾ c flour
• ¾ c dried cherries

Oh yeah, the sliced almonds... I didn't bother using them. You can try adding them if you'd like.

What you gotta do:

WARNING: I'm totally winging it here and taking you along for the ride as I make up a new cookie recipe.

So, I had about ¾ of a cup of butter and didn’t want to bother actually measuring half a cup (the usual amount I use for cookies) so I just dumped it all into the bowl. I’d been thinking I’d use a full cup of almond butter, but as I was pouring it into the measuring cup I realized that 1 cup would probably be too much.

Plus, I like recipes where all of the ingredients have similar or proportional measurements. It’s a bit of an OCD thing for me, but I don’t mind because I find that it usually simplifies recipes nicely. (Go look, you’ll see, I rarely mix halves and thirds)

Once the butters are combined, add the eggs

and then the extract. I’ve been soaking dried cherries in amaretto liqueur for a while now,

and used some of the cherry tinted liqueur.

Since I was totally winging this, and not entirely sure how much flour I’d need, I added it half a cup at a time, starting with a full cup. And sprinkled the baking powder on top of the flour, rather than sifting them together. I know sifting is considered very important by some people, but I rarely bother and things usually work out just fine.

Okay, so, one cup is not enough.

One and a half, not quite either.

I was really hoping to make a drop cookie, with a dough as soft as something like a chocolate chip cookie… um, I have no recipe that I can link back to! WTF. How did we make it through an entire year without making brownies or chocolate chip cookies?? ah ha! Taneasha kinda did chocolate chip... still, I think we're going to have to do a chips only post.

Anyway, drop cookie. That’s what I was going for. But that last half a cup…

Really should have been only a quarter cup.

Huh. That means that rather than 2 cups of flour, I need 1 ¾. Awesome.

So, I chopped up the ¾ c dried cherries and stirred them in.

But since I used 2 cups, I had a firmer dough that didn’t “drop” well onto the cookie sheet. I really didn’t want to go with the shaped ball pressed down with a crisscross of forks, so I just “dropped” the balls onto the sheet.

Yeah, totally dropped the ball on this one. They didn’t spread at all. And 12 minutes at 375 was too long.

Yes, 375 degrees. Preheat your oven now.

So, the next set, I rolled into balls and then flattened a bit with my hand, and baked them for only 10 minutes.

Better.

By the end of the dough, I’d given in and was rolling and flattening the cookies into symmetrical discs before baking them.

So much for drop cookies.

Also, after tasting a few, I realized that it’s not just peanut butter cookies I don’t like. It must be something about the nut butter… it just doesn’t make sense. I like peanut butter on toast. I like using it in hoisin sauce. I even like almond butter on toast and in amarettis, which are a cookie… but they’re more of a meringue/macaroon than they are a cookie…

Sigh. I’m so weird.

Oh well, at least the guys at work liked them.

 What kind of cookie don't you like?