Strawberry Shortbread Cookies
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These tender, buttery, and crisp Strawberry Shortbread Cookies are absolutely delicious with a fresh berry flavor. No artificial ingredients needed!
Aren’t these heart-shaped Strawberry Shortbread Cookies the prettiest? They will make a perfect gift for your loved ones. I guarantee that these will bring a smile to their face!
The Strawberry Shortbread Cookies are buttery and crisp. They have an incredibly sweet, tart, and fruity flavour from the strawberries. The strawberry flavor comes mainly from freeze-dried strawberries. Therefore, no strawberry essence is used in this recipe, only real strawberries!
The cookies are good eaten plain, but I decided to drizzle white chocolate on top and sprinkle bits of freeze-dried strawberries for extra strawberry flavour.
Ingredients You Need
- Unsalted butter. Use good-quality butter for the best flavor. Soften your butter to room temperature for easy mixing.
- Confectioners’ sugar. Confectioners’ sugar keeps the cookies light and tender.
- Vanilla extract. To enhance the flavour.
- Cake flour/all-purpose flour. You can use cake flour or all-purpose flour for shortbread cookies. I personally like to use cake flour because it gives light, crisp, and tender textures to the cookies. If you use all-purpose flour, I find them softer and chewier than the ones made with cake flour.
- Freeze-dried strawberry powder. Add a strawberry flavor and pink hue to the cookies. To make freeze-dried strawberry powder, you can add freeze-dried strawberries to a food processor and blend them into a powder.
- Salt. To balance the sweetness.
- White chocolate. To decorate the cookies and make bits of freeze-dried strawberries stick to the cookies.
- Freeze-dried strawberries. For decoration and to add more strawberry flavor to the cookies.
Do Not Substitute Freeze-Dried Strawberries With Fresh Strawberries
The secret to the fresh berry flavor in these Strawberry Shortbread Cookies is freeze-dried strawberries. The freeze-drying process eliminates the moisture and, therefore, will not affect the texture of the cookies because we can add it to the shortbread dough without any extra liquid.
If you use fresh strawberries, you will incorporate more liquid into the dough, which can lead to a bad outcome. It could cause the dough to become too wet and runny, resulting in cookies that spread too much and have a poor texture.
Baking Tips
- Use room temperature butter. It refers to soft and pliable butter, but still cool to the touch. There should be an indent when you press with your finger.
- Weigh your ingredients. For the best result, please measure the ingredients by weight. Using cup measurements for flour is often inaccurate because the density of flour changes based on how it is packed, so a cup can hold significantly different weights. Too much flour can lead to crumbly dough, or not enough flour can cause the cookies to spread.
- Chill the dough. Chilling the dough before and after shaping will help to retain the shape of the cookies. A short stay in the fridge will firm up the cookies and solidify the butter. This will help keep them from spreading too much and help concentrate those flavors for your best shortbread. In addition, the cold dough will make the cutting neat with sharp edges. If you feel like your dough is becoming too soft, stick it in the fridge for 10-15 minutes before working with it again.
More Shortbread Cookies Recipes
- Matcha Shortbread Cookies
- Earl Grey Shortbread Cookies
- Lemon Thyme Shortbread Cookies
- Masala Chai Shortbread Cookies
- Zebra-Striped Matcha Shortbread Cookies
- Zebra-Striped Shortbread Cookies
- Maple Pecan Shortbread Cookies
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup (150 gr) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup (60 gr) confectioners' sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups (180 gr) cake flour/all-purpose flour
- 2 1/2 tbsp (20 gr) freeze-dried strawberry powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
Decoration
- White chocolate, melted
- Freeze-dried strawberries, finely chopped
Instructions
- How to make freeze-dried strawberry powder: Add freeze-dried strawberries to a food processor and pulse into a fine powder. If you don't have a food procesoor, place the freeze-dried strawberries in a ziplock bag and use a rolling pin to beat the strawberries until they are powdery. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, add butter. Sift in confectioners' sugar and add vanilla extract. Mix with a spatula or mixer just until combined.
- Sift in the cake flour, freeze-dried strawberry powder, and salt. Mix with a spatula until the dough starts to come together. It will look crumbly at first, but the dough will come together as you continue mixing.
- Chill the dough for at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator.
- Preheat oven to 300℉/150℃ and line two baking pans with parchment paper.
- Take the dough out of the refrigerator. Roll the dough into a 1/4-inch (5 mm) thick slab. Cut the dough with a cookie cutter. Place the cut dough on baking sheets, spaced at least an inch apart. Re-roll the scraps and refrigerate for a few minutes until firm again. Repeat the process until all the dough is used.
- Chill in the refrigerator for another 30 minutes if the dough has warmed up.
- Bake for 15-18 minutes or until the bottom edges of the cookies are lightly brown.
- Let the cookies cool for about 5 minutes on the baking sheet, then carefully transfer them to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
Decoration
- Pour the melted white chocolate into a piping bag and drizzle the chocolate over the cookies.
- Sprinkle chopped freeze-dried strawberries over the cookies. Let the chocolate firm up before serving.
Love the strawberry flavors!