All the fresh berry flavor comes from actual strawberries in the buttery, tender cookie dough! If you don't have a crescent moon shaped cookie cutter, use a circle cookie cutter for full moon shaped strawberry cookies.
Stand Mixer (the icing needs to be mixed for 10 minutes)
Icing Bags, Couplers, Ties
Round Piping Tips #1 and #3
Toothpick
Black Food Color Pen
Ingredients
Dough
3cupsFlour
1scant cupGranulated Sugar
21 oz pkgFreeze Dried Strawberries, ground into dust with food processor
1stickButter, softened
1largeEgg
2TbspHalf & Half
1tspVanilla Extract
1/2tspSalt
1 1/2tspBaking Powder
Icing
1lbPowdered Sugar
2.5TbspMeringue Powder
1/2tspCream of Tartar
3ozWarm Water
1tspVanilla Extract
Red & Green Gel Food Coloring, if desired
Instructions
Cookies
In a large mixing bowl cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add eggs, half & half, strawberry dust, and vanilla to bowl and mix well.
In separate bowl combine flour, salt, and baking powder. Add this flour mixture to egg mixture a little at a time, blending between additions. Mix until dry ingredients are fully incorporated and dough holds together well.
Separate dough into two balls. Cut two pan-sized pieces of parchment paper and place each ball on its own piece. Roll out balls to 1/4 inch thickness and transfer parchment and dough to two cookie sheets. Chill in refrigerator for twenty minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Remove rolled out dough from fridge and flip onto counter. Re-line cookie sheets with fresh parchment. Cut moon shapes into the dough with your cookie cutter and transfer cut cookies to pans. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until barely brown around the edges. Cool completely before icing.
Add all the powdered sugar to mixing bowl. Using a paddle attachment, mix on lowest speed for 10 minutes. Yes, 10 whole minutes. Icing will be quite thick!
Using a rubber spatula, thin icing down with water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until a "thin toothpaste" consistency is reached. Scoop out quarter of the icing into a smaller bowl to mix in green coloring, and a second same-sized amount into a bowl to mix up your red icing.
Using a toothpick add gel food coloring to each of the smaller bowls and stir until desired tones of red and green are reached. Assemble each icing bag with coupler and cut off the end of the bag. Affix a #3 round tip to one bag and #1 round tips to two bags. Fill the #3 tip bag with white icing and #1 tipped bags with green and red icing, respectively. Tie off bag tops with rubber ties. Line your workspace with parchment paper, gather all your tools, pile your cookies within reach, and get ready to decorate!
Decorating Cookies
Using steady pressure and slow movement, pipe a line with white icing around the edge of your cookie, or on parts of the cookie where you want that color. Make sure the ends of the line meet and that there are no gaps. Working back and forth, fill inside the outline or shapes with white icing. A few tiny gaps are fixable.
Using toothpick, swirl the icing around to smooth it out and fill in any holes. Alternatively, you can pick up the cookie (being careful not to touch the icing edges) and gently shake it to settle the finish. Poke any tiny bubbles with the toothpick.
Wait for white icing to set for about twenty minutes before adding berry shapes on top. (Option: If you'd like to experiment with wet-on-wet technique, go in with a second color immediately.) Use #1 tips to pipe triangle shapes for strawberries and squiggles for leaves. Allow to set for three hours before using food color pen to add dots (seeds!) to berries. Let dry and store in an airtight storage container. Cookies stay delicious for up to a week!