I've been eating a lot of freeze-dried strawberries lately (I like them mixed into my morning yogurt) and since I generally have a bag on hand I decided to try Irvin Lin's "Strawberry and Cream Cookies" from Marbled, Swirled, and Layered. Technically, this recipe is a variation of his iced tea/lemonade Arnold Palmer cookies, which I really like and have made a few times. But the strawberry and cream cookie is so different from the Arnold Palmer cookie that a casual taster would be hard pressed to figure out that they were derived from the same base recipe.
In the Arnold Palmer cookie recipe, the doughs have some differences aside from the fact that one contains ground Lipton tea and the other includes lemon zest and extract; the lemonade dough is made with all-purpose flour and granulated sugar, while the iced tea dough is made with a mix of granulated and dark brown sugars and a combination of all-purpose and whole-wheat flours. For the strawberry and cream cookies, both doughs are based off of the lemonade cookie dough recipe, with all-purpose flour and white sugar only. The strawberry dough contains 1.2 ounces of ground freeze-dried strawberries and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. The cream dough contains four ounces of melted white chocolate (I used Cacao Barry Zéphyr) and 90 grams of powdered dry milk.
After you make the two different doughs, you just squish together a chunk of each flavor dough, roll it into a ball, and flatten the cookie slightly before baking. I used a #50 scoop to portion out both doughs and was able to get 30 strawberry and cream cookies and four cookies that were all cream; there was significantly more cream dough than strawberry. I didn't add the optional red food coloring to the strawberry dough and the color of the baked cookies was muted.
The cream dough was very dry and stiff and both halves of the cookies formed deep cracks during baking. This was quite different from the Arnold Palmer cookie, which baked into a much flatter cookie with a relatively smooth surface. Lin does not include any glaze recipe for the strawberry and cream cookie, which made sense to me given how uneven the top surface was. I thought these cookies were quite good, especially the delightfully fruity strawberry half. My tasters seemed to be more enthusiastic about them than I was. One co-worker remarked that they reminded him (in a good way) of astronaut ice cream, which was logical considering that they are flavored in large part with freeze-dried strawberries and powdered dry milk. Another raved that this might be her favorite cookie from my repertoire. I would make these again -- but would also be tempted to make just a pure strawberry cookie!
Recipe: "Strawberry and Cream Cookies [variation of Jumbo Arnold Palmer Cookies]" from Marbled, Swirled, and Layered by Irvin Lin.
Previous Post: "A Cookie for the King: Jumbo Arnold Palmer Cookies," May 27, 2017.
In the Arnold Palmer cookie recipe, the doughs have some differences aside from the fact that one contains ground Lipton tea and the other includes lemon zest and extract; the lemonade dough is made with all-purpose flour and granulated sugar, while the iced tea dough is made with a mix of granulated and dark brown sugars and a combination of all-purpose and whole-wheat flours. For the strawberry and cream cookies, both doughs are based off of the lemonade cookie dough recipe, with all-purpose flour and white sugar only. The strawberry dough contains 1.2 ounces of ground freeze-dried strawberries and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. The cream dough contains four ounces of melted white chocolate (I used Cacao Barry Zéphyr) and 90 grams of powdered dry milk.
After you make the two different doughs, you just squish together a chunk of each flavor dough, roll it into a ball, and flatten the cookie slightly before baking. I used a #50 scoop to portion out both doughs and was able to get 30 strawberry and cream cookies and four cookies that were all cream; there was significantly more cream dough than strawberry. I didn't add the optional red food coloring to the strawberry dough and the color of the baked cookies was muted.
Recipe: "Strawberry and Cream Cookies [variation of Jumbo Arnold Palmer Cookies]" from Marbled, Swirled, and Layered by Irvin Lin.
Previous Post: "A Cookie for the King: Jumbo Arnold Palmer Cookies," May 27, 2017.
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