Strawberry Shortcake Cookies

After a few days of feeling a bit blue, I finally have a day off. I always get my Sundays off but lately I have been working right through the rest of the week and today I got to sleep in and have the house to myself. Hurrah! And when I got up (finally) I leaped into action,  a whole day where I had nothing that I HAD to do or go, feeling fantastic, I took myself off to the local library to peruse their cookbooks. With so many to choose from, how on earth is one to choose only three to take home? It was quite a dilemma but I chose wisely (I think), Domini Kemp ‘Itsa Cookbook’, ‘Delia’s Cakes’ and Tessa Kiros ‘Limoncello and Linen Water’. None of which I needed for today but something to keep me warm while I’m on my own in the house tonight.

Anyhoo last night I had a dream about making biscuits. Every christmas I make little shortbread cookies that I wrap up and give to family and friends as little token presents. So I messed around this afternoon with the recipe and adapted it to make Strawberry Shortcake cookies and could not wait to share them.

They are not so much a shortbread but slightly more spongy and lighter hence they are shortcake cookies. My first two batches were a complete disaster! I used too much liquid and they sprawled all over the baking tray and looked a little like puddles. I had run out of milk and eggs at that stage and saw that I had Greek Yogurt so I improvised and used that. D and I have started using yogurt in place of milk in things like mash potato so I thought I’d give it a go. I’m sure that the next time I make these, they’ll be even better but for now they are just perfect. So my third attempt worked a treat. I have eaten a fair few already and I think they are quite yummy but I’m hoping that D comes home and likes them as much as I do, but I can’t wait, I just want to share. So here you go…

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE COOKIES

Cookies:

• 150 g strawberries, diced
• 2 tsp lime juice
• 270 g all purpose flour, plus 2tbsp
• 150 g caster sugar, plus 225 g caster sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 90 g cold butter, diced
• 100g greek yogurt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• zest of 1 lime

Glaze:

• 150 g icing sugar
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1.5 tsp vanilla extract

THE HOW

Preheat oven to 190 °c  (fan oven) or gas mark 5.

In a small bowl put the strawberries, lime juice, 2 tbsp of flour and the 225 g of sugar into a bowl and toss. Put this is the fridge until later.

In a medium sized bowl, sift the remaining flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cut in the butter or with your fingertips, rub the butter in until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Stir in the yogurt and the vanilla. It may look a little dry at this point but while you have been doing this, in the fridge, the sugar has been reacting with the strawberries and started to draw out their liquid. Fold the strawberry mix into the flour and yogurt mix. It will now look like a cookie dough.

Spoon the mix (I use a soup spoon) onto a lined baking sheet and pop into the oven for 15-17 minutes until lightly golden.

Cool on a wire rack. Do not put the glaze on until fully cooled or the glaze will melt off.

To make the glaze, mix the icing sugar, milk and vanilla together and using a fine piping bag, if you don’t have one you can make one by rolling baking paper into a cone shape and snip the tip.

          

I probably shouldn’t but I wanted you to see my first batch. Hopefully yours don’t turn out anything like this (but if they should, just try again and reduce your liquid content) but I’m still going to make D eat them …