If you love strawberries and sugar cookies, these strawberry sugar cookies will satisfy your sweet tooth! the fresh strawberry icing on these cookies is bursting with flavor to compliment the satisfying texture of sugar cookie and buttercream icing.
If you’re familiar with making sugar cookies, you know that there are two basic type – thin, and soft.
I’m personally a fan of the soft, pillowy type, and you can find my favorite recipe for soft gluten free sugar cookies here. They’re excellent for Christmas, or any other time you want to treat yourself.
These strawberry sugar cookies have a bit more of a rustic feel. Even though they’re the same basic concept – soft. They’re made to be unfussy, and have a built in holder for your fresh strawberry icing.
One of my favorite things about these cookies is that they give you the traditional soft sugar cookie texture and flavor, but they’re very low maintenance. You don’t need a rolling pin, cookie cutters, or to get flour all over your kitchen rolling them out.
Just scoop up a walnut-sized bit, and roll it into a ball.
Then use the bottom of a small jar or glass to press the middle flat, leaving an indentation for where your icing will go later, and creating those rustic, jagged edges.
Strawberry sugar cookies
You may notice that the cookies themselves don’t have real strawberries in them. This is partly so you have the nice visual contrast between the cookie and the icing. However, if you want to make them pink, you can add a drop or two of food coloring, or replace a tablespoon of flour with 2 tablespoons of strawberry powder (puree freeze dried strawberries).
They do pack strawberry flavor however, thanks to strawberry extract. You can use LorAnn flavoring oils, or McCormick strawberry extract. (it’s like vanilla, but somehow a lot cheaper?)
The icing however does use fresh strawberries. Having a few chunks of strawberry showing up does help with that rustic feel after all, and let’s face it – there just nothing quite like the flavor of fresh strawberries! We used almost the exact same icing in our strawberry lemon blondies by the way, and if you like strawberries, I highly recommend trying that recipe as well.
Is this recipe gluten free?
That’s up to you. I give you instructions for using both traditional all purpose flour, and gluten free flour in the recipe card below.
The main difference in gluten free and traditional cookies is going to be the way you handle them. Gluten free sugar cookies can be a little easier to break while they’re hot, so you need to be gentle with them.
Secondly, they can dry out faster, so you’ll need to store them in an airtight container.
The other difference besides the flour will be the addition of xanthin gum. If you’re gluten free and like to make your own flour mixes, you probably have some on hand. If you use prepackaged mixes though and don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry! Look at the ingredients of your mix. most mixes contain a binder, or blend of binders like xanthin or guar gum. In that case, just ignore that ingredient on the recipe list.
PrintStrawberry Sugar Cookies
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 8 minutes
- Total Time: 18 minutes
- Yield: 12 1x
- Category: dessert
Ingredients
For the cookies:
- 2 cups all purpose flour or gluten-free flour mix
- 1 teaspoon xanthan gum if using a gluten free flour mix that doesn’t already contain gum (otherwise, leave if out)
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder
- ⅔ cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup butter, softened
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 teaspoons strawberry extract
- 1–2 tablespoons milk
For the icing:
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 2 strawberries
- 2 Tablespoons melted butter
Instructions
- preheat oven to 350º
- in a large bowl, mix flour, xanthan gum (if using), baking powder, and sugar.
- Combine well.
- Add butter, egg, 1 tablespoon of milk, and vanilla.
- Mix dough until if comes together, adding the second tablespoon of milk if necessary.
- Dough will be stiff.
- Roll into walnut-sized balls, and place on uncreased cookie sheet 3 inches apart
- Press each ball with a small (half-pint) jar or glass until about 1/4 inch thick
- Bake in center of oven for 7-10 minutes until the edges just begin to brown.
- Remove cookies from oven, and allow to cool until set.
- Transfer to a wire rack, and let cool completely.
- To make icing: blend or mash strawberries, and beat together with powdered sugar and butter
- Once cookies are cool, top each with a dollop of icing, and spread with a knife
- Enjoy!
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