These bright strawberry cookies get their flavor from real strawberries–no cake mix or extract needed. My recipe is quick and requires NO chilling! Recipe includes a how-to video!
Strawberry Cookies With Real Strawberries
These super soft strawberry cookies are loaded with incredible, fresh flavor, thanks to freeze-dried strawberries. That’s right, these pretty pink cookies contain no artificial flavors, boxed strawberry cake mix, or gelatin! Instead, they rely on perfectly ripe, REAL strawberries that incorporate beautifully into the dough.
When testing this recipe, I did make a few attempts to use fresh strawberries instead of freeze dried, but all were unsuccessful, or at least they weren’t as good as I knew they could be. Using fresh berries introduced a lot of excess moisture into the dough (even when I cooked the berries down on the stovetop), making the cookies cakey (if you’ve made my pumpkin cookies, you know how I feel about cakey cookies) and honestly just lacking in strawberry flavor.
So I chose to use freeze-dried berries for the brightest (and most consistent) strawberry flavor, much like in my strawberry frosting!
Why you’ll love this recipe:
- NO chilling required!
- No artificial flavors (and the option to skip the food coloring too).
- Only 8 ingredients!
- Less than half an hour to make.
- Uses REAL strawberries (they’re freeze-dried, but they’re still real!)!
What You Need
Besides the berries, you’ll need a few other basic ingredients, all of which should be in your pantry already.
- Freeze-dried strawberries. These are real strawberries that have been sliced and dehydrated. No additional ingredients should be added to them. They are light, crisp, and super flavorful! We’ll process these into a fine powder using a food processor before adding them to our strawberry cookies. Can’t find them in your local grocery store? Amazon sells them too!
- Flour. Make sure you know how to measure flour properly; adding too much flour to the dough can cause dry cookies that don’t spread much.
- Butter. Use unsalted butter since we are adding salt ourselves. Make sure your butter is softened, but don’t let it get too melty, or your cookies will spread too much. If all you have on hand is salted butter, you can reduce the salt in the recipe to ¼ teaspoon–I talk about this conversion in my salted vs. unsalted butter post!
- Sugar. We’ll add granulated sugar to the dough itself and then use a bit more for rolling the strawberry cookies before they bake.
- Food coloring. This is optional, but it does give the cookies a pretty pink color. I recommend using gel food coloring for the best results.
You may notice that this recipe doesn’t include vanilla extract. This was intentional. The vanilla extract bullied the flavor from the berries and diminished it too much. You get a more vibrant berry flavor if you don’t include this ingredient.
SAM’S TIP: Be careful not to over-bake your cookies! This will make them dry and greatly affect their taste. These cookies lose so much of their strawberry flavor if overcooked.
Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Strawberry Cookies
- Pulverize the freeze dried strawberries into fine powder using a food processor. Set aside one tablespoon for rolling later.
- Beat together the butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium high speed until creamy, about 2 minutes.
- Stir in the strawberry powder (not the reserved tablespoon) until combined, then stir in the food coloring, if using.
- Add the egg and stir until combined.
- Whisk together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then gradually add them into the strawberry mixture in three parts.
- Make the rolling mixture – Whisk together the reserved strawberry powder and ¼ cup granulated sugar. Roll 1½ tablespoon sized dough balls through the sugar mixture.
- Place the dough balls 2″ apart on a parchment lined sheet and bake for 11 minutes at 350F.
- Let the cookies cool for a few minutes on their sheet before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely.
SAM’S TIP: Make sure to let your baking sheet cool completely between batches. Adding the cookie dough to a hot (or even warm) sheet could result in runny, messy strawberry cookies.
Frequently Asked Questions
Absolutely not! Food coloring is helpful for a true pink color (or a hot pink color, like I clearly opted for), and your strawberry cookies will simply be much prettier this way. If you don’t care about the color, you can skip the food coloring, but just know the cookies will be a more natural, brownish color if you do. I show an example of an un-dyed cookie in the video (and un-dyed is typically how I feed them to my kids!).
I haven’t tried this myself, but I suspect that any other freeze dried berry would work just fine here.
If you try this recipe with another type of freeze dried fruit, please let me know how it works for you in the comments!
Yes! You can make this dough up to 5 days in advance. If you’d like to freeze the dough, follow the instructions for rolled cookies in my how to freeze cookie dough post.
Love fruity cookies? Try my lemon cookies next!
Enjoy!
Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook
Strawberry Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 ½ cups (45 g) freeze-dried strawberries see note (1.5oz)
- 1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter softened
- 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
- Pink food coloring optional
- 1 large egg
- 1 ¾ cups (215 g) all-purpose flour
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ cup (50 g) granulated sugar for rolling
Recommended Equipment
- pink food coloring optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F (175C).
- Place freeze-dried strawberries in a food processor and pulse repeatedly until they’re ground to a fine dust. Measure out 1 Tablespoon of fine powder and place in a small dish (for rolling the cookies).2 ½ cups (45 g) freeze-dried strawberries
- Combine butter and granulated sugar in large bowl and use an electric mixer to beat until well-creamed (about 2 minutes on md-high speed).1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter, 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
- Add strawberry powder (minus the Tablespoon which you will reserve for later) and stir on low-speed until combined.
- If desired, add pink food coloring until desired color is achieved.Pink food coloring
- Stir in egg until combined.1 large egg
- In a separate dish, whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda. With mixer on low-speed, gradually add to the strawberry mixture in 3 parts, stirring until completely combined.1 ¾ cups (215 g) all-purpose flour, ¾ teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon baking soda
- Take your reserved strawberry powder from earlier and add ¼ cup (50 g) of granulated sugar. Whisk until well-combined.¼ cup (50 g) granulated sugar
- Scoop dough by level 1 ½ Tablespoon and roll between your palms to make a smooth ball. Roll through the strawberry/sugar mixture until completely coated and place on a parchment lined baking sheet, spacing at least 2” apart.
- Bake in center rack of 350F (175C) oven for 11 minutes. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for several minutes before using a spatula to carefully transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely before enjoying.
Notes
Freeze-dried strawberries
These are usually sold in the grocery store in the dried fruit and nut section. I place these in a food processor and pulverize until they’re a fine dust. If you already have powdered strawberries, you will need 1 cup of powder.Storing
Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.Nutrition
Nutritional information is based on third-party calculations and should be considered an estimate only. Actual nutritional content will vary based upon brands used, measuring methods, cooking method, portion sizes, and more.
Jacy Head
These cookies are absolutely divine. I like to add about 2 tablespoons of strawberry jam to the recipe and it just takes it to the next level.
Casey @ Sugar Spun Run
So happy to hear you enjoy them Jacy! Thanks for sharing your modifications, that sounds amazing!
Jacy
Well, thank you for creating this amazing recipe. I seriously get so many compliments every time I make it.
Cass
Great Recipe! Cookies turned out soft and chewy, and the stawberry flavor was intense even though I didn’t have as much as it called for. Works well with the addition of white chocolate chips, too
Sam
I’m so glad you enjoyed them so much, Cass! 🙂
Julie
Hello. Love your recipes but haven’t yet tried this one. Any suggestions on how to adjust the recipe to add lemon juice and zest to make them lemon strawberry cookies? Thank you for any help.
Sam
Hi Julie! I haven’t tried it, but that sounds like a fun experiment! If you do try it I would love to know how it goes. 🙂
Nina
Fantastic recipe. Can’t go wrong with this, easy to do, simple ingredients, yummy cookies. A definite crowd pleaser. Will for sure be making this recipe again!
Sam
I’m so glad you enjoyed them so much, Nina! 🙂
Rafael
These were really good! I liked the strawberry flavor. We didn’t use the food coloring, so the color was a bit more purplish than red — still very pretty and delicious!
Sam
I’m so glad you enjoyed them so much! 🙂
Angela
These cookies were amazing!!! Turned out exactly like the picture. Made them for my granddaughter’s 1st birthday party and everyone loved them! This is definitely a keeper recipe
Sam
I’m so glad you enjoyed it so much, Angela! 🙂
Angela
These cookies were amazing!!! Turned out exactly like the picture. Made them for my granddaughter’s 1st birthday party and everyone loved them! This is definitely a keeper recipe ❤️
mae
literally the best cookies I’ve ever made. Kinda hard to find the strawberries but it’s so worth it!!
Emily @ Sugar Spun Run
We are so happy you enjoyed them, Mae!
Huitzil
Absolute heaven in cookie form. another of your recipes that goes into our rotation. Thank you.
Sam
I’m so glad you enjoyed them so much! 🙂
Catherine
Amazing recipe. Seems like it took some trials and experimentation. I made them with dried raspberries as well and they are my new favorite. Thanks for doing all the hard work that goes into offering a great recipe.
Sam
Thank you so much, Catherine! I’m so glad you enjoyed them so much! 🙂
Gal
These cookies are absolutely scrumptious!! The recipe is easy to follow and just the right balance between the tartness of the dried strawberries and sweetness. I used a stand mixer and think I over mixed my batter because some of the cookies came out like little domes, but no fear, they were delicious. I only have one mixing bowl, so to avoid cleaning, after mixing the egg, I added the flour mix to the strawberry-butter mix instead of the other way as instructed in the recipe. I know from experience that order is key when baking anything but decided to try my luck and reaped the yummy consequences. XD Aside from my mistake, I’m going to try these again for sure!!
Sam
I’m so glad you enjoyed them so much, Gal! 🙂
Amy
I followed the recipe and directions exactly and the cookies spread flat. So flat that I ended up having to throw them out. Like crepe thin. Not sure what I could have done wrong.
Sam
Hi Amy! I’m so sorry this happened! These are a thinner cookie, but shouldn’t be too thin to eat. Did you weigh all of your ingredients? Was your butter too soft, almost melty?
Sarah
Delicious cookies!! This will be my second time making them. Do you think I could stuff them with a little bit of cream cheese filling?
Sam
Hi Sarah! I think you could potentially stuff these with a little cream cheese filling. I would probably freeze them for about 10 minutes before baking. 🙂
Jessica
Hi if I make these bigger like 4 or 5 ounce cookies what would be the temp to cook them and the time difference. I hate cakey cookies as well but would love for these to be bigger in size.
Sam
Hi Jessica! I think you could probably get them to 3oz without issue, but I’d be worried about going larger than that. I would try just one before using up the entire batter. I probably wouldn’t change the temperature and I don’t know what the bake time would be. Let me know how it goes if you try it. 🙂