Strawberry Shortbread Cookie - We love these buttery shortbread cookies, they're delicious- adorable perfection! Add in some ripe red strawberry flavor, and they're even more scrumptious! Sticky sweet strawberry jam, crunchy freeze-dried strawberries in the dough, create an irresistible flavor combination what's not to love?
These sweet strawberry jam shortbread sandwiches are a great way to say "I love you" when you use some heart shaped cookie cutters, like we did for Valentines Day.
Baking can be intimidating, as it is a bit of a science project to get it just right. Even perfecting a chocolate chip cookies recipe can be daunting, believe us, we know! It's hard to find recipes that are dependable and easy, give our Dark Chocolate Pistachio Crinkle Cookies a try.
That's why it's such a refreshing change to prepare some shortbread dough. With some all-purpose flour, butter, and sugar, the basics are already covered. These delicious, sweet treats only need some freeze-dried strawberries, and some sweet strawberry jam added to the mix. You can even make the shortbread dough way ahead of the time and bake them when it's convenient!
Jump to:
What You're Going to Need!
- Freeze-Dried Strawberries - Freeze dried products have really become trendy and a lot more widely available in the last couple of years, and these strawberries are one of the things that really make this cookie recipe something special. Why freeze dried, you may ask? You don't want to add too much moisture to the shortbread dough or else it just won't set up, and regular dried strawberries are lovely, but are also very chewy. The light and airy crunch of crushed freeze-dried berries is just perfect.
- Butter - As pretty much always, high quality, unsalted butter is best, so we can control the level of seasoning better.
- Salt - These strawberry cookies really do benefit greatly from the salt in the recipe, since it has so sweet and simple of a base.
- Brown Sugar - The hint of rich molasses in light brown sugar not only provides a rich flavor, but a little moisture as well.
- White Sugar - We can't just use the brown sugar, or the dough will be too wet, so we need some granulated sugar also.
- Strawberry Jam - This is not in the picture, but there are so many choices out there, just use one that you really enjoy. Jam or preserves specifically provide a little more texture than jelly does. We really adore this brand, with its tiny wild type strawberries in it!
See recipe card for quantities.
Recipe
Best Strawberry Shortbread Sandwich Cookie Recipe
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Pull the butter from the refrigerator 2 hours before you mix the dough.
- Using a rolling pin, smash up the freeze-dried strawberries, keeping them in the bag helps keep them all together.
- Add the butter, the brown sugar, white sugar, and salt to the mixing bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. You can use a handheld mixer fitted with the dough attachments, and a separate mixing bowl.
- Cream the butter, sugars, and salt together on medium-high speed. Scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula and mix again until well combined.
- Add the flour one cup at a time, mixing on low to medium speed until combined, scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula in between.
- Add the crushed freeze-dried strawberries and mix on low to combine.
- Place a piece of parchment paper on a board or countertop, scrape out the dough onto it. Using your hands push the dough together forming a flat rectangle.
- Wrap the dough tightly in the parchment paper and plastic wrap. For the best results allow the dough to chill in the refrigerator overnight or for at least 4 hours.
- When the dough is chilled, lightly flour a cutting board or countertop. Remove the dough from the wrappings and place it on the floured surface. Allow it to sit for about 20 minutes before rolling it out.
- Roll the dough out to about ½ inch thickness, being careful to not let it stick to the board. If you need to release it from sticking use a dough blade or the flat side of a knife to shimmy under it to release it. Shortbread dough can be a bit crumbly, that's normal, just use your hands to push it back together as you roll it out.
- Using the cutters of your choice, cut out the tops and bottoms of your sandwich cookies. First cut a large sized cookie then use a smaller cutter to create the window.
- Make sure to cut an equal number of tops and bottoms for your sandwich cookies. Place them carefully onto a prepared baking sheet pan, and into the freezer for 30 minutes while you preheat the oven to 350℉
- Separate the cut cookies onto 2 baking sheet pans lined with parchment paper, Spacing them about 2 inches apart. Bake at 350℉ for 4 minutes then rotate your pans and continue baking for 5 minutes. Place the pans on a wire rack to cool.
- Cool to room temperature and spread the jam on the bottom cookie, place the cut-out cookie on top and garnish with reserved crushed strawberries and powdered sugar.
- Always keep in mind that you can push together the leftover scrapes from cutting out the cookies and wrap it tight with plastic wrap and either refrigerate or freeze to bake at another time. Make sure you at least refrigerate it for 4 hours before rolling and baking.
Nutrition
Tried this recipe?
Let us know how it was!How to Make Strawberry Shortbread Cookies (Step-by-Step Instructions)
- Using the bag to hold them together, use a rolling pin and smash the strawberries. You'll want them to be pretty small, but not quite powder. The little crunchy bits are a nice textural surprise.
2. Combine both sugars, butter, and salt in a stand mixer, (or in a bowl with a hand mixer).
3. Mix the first parts together until well incorporated, this part is called "creaming".
4. Add flour in two steps, 1 cup at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl down in between, so that everything mixes well.
5. Once the flour is mixed in well, the dough should look like this.
6. This is when the freeze-dried strawberries come into play. Add them to the dough and mix them in on low speed so as not to over mix.
7. Once the strawberries are mixed in well, the dough will have this appearance, (reminds me a little of crunch berries cereal!)
8. Scrape it fully out of the mixer and mold it together by hand into a single mass, on a piece of parchment paper.
9.A critical component is wrapping the dough up tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerating it for at least 4 hours. This will make for more tender cookies. with a less dense texture. We suggest overnight, but at least 4 hours will work.
10. Pull the dough out of the fridge, allow for 20 minutes or so for it to lose some of its chill, and then roll out on a lightly floured surface until about ½ inch thick.
11. Cut the top portion of the sandwiches as shown, using the smaller cutter to make the hollow center. Remember that you will need an equal number of bottom cookies that do not have a cut out.
12. Here you see the results of cutting the dough out to the proper shapes. Handle them with care, as they can be quite brittle at this point.
13. Place the finished cookie "pucks" onto a paper lined sheet pan and place into the freezer for 30 minutes. In the meantime, heat your oven to 350 degrees. When the cookies come out of the freezer, pop them straight into the oven for 9 minutes, and then let them cool on a wire rack to room temperature.
14. Spread the jam across the bottom cookies and sandwich the tops on.
15. The finished sandwiches look lovely with a little sprinkling of powdered sugar. You will also have little "bonus" cookies from the cut-out middles!
Chef Tip
Once the cookies have been formed, make sure to get them really cold again in the freezer while the oven is heating. The flour is ideally well hydrated with the butter, and as such, needs to be cold before baking so that it doesn't just melt and separate, creating a mushy blob.
Storage & Helpful Hints
The finished cookies will hold at room temperature in an airtight container for 3-4 days before going stale. If you would like to make the cookie dough in advance, it can be stored tightly wrapped in the refrigerator for up to 5 days before baking, or in the freezer for up to a month.
The step where the finished dough goes into the refrigerator to rest before being worked with is absolutely essential. When that flour gets worked together with all of the other ingredients, it can create some gluten, which will make the texture of the finished cookies way to dense and even chewy, which is not what you want. Leaving it to rest overnight, (or at least 4 hours), allows the gluten to relax, and eliminates this possibility.
Newest Recipe!
Kale Salad with Warm Bacon Mushroom Vinaigrette
Warm Bacon Vinaigrette
is one of our absolutely favorite things to eat! This hearty salad is full of flavor and the perfect way to combine healthy kale leaves, pomegranate seeds, and salty bacon.
Of course you can, the key is that the fruit is freeze-dried.
Jason Miller says
Shortbread with strawberries, how can you go wrong?