Strawberry Cornmeal Cookies

Summer in cookie form! # 406: Strawberry Cornmeal Cookies

This recipe made me whip out my baking detective hat. I saw a sped up video montage of LA pastry chef Jennifer Hsiao making them and decided I needed them in my life.

Luckily, there’s a second in the video where she flashes the handwritten list of ingredients so I was able to screenshot and study it. Of course, it’s a bulk recipe for a bakery so baking math (the only math I’ll do these days) was required to pare it down.

I was feeling pretty clever until I got to the listing for butter and said “3#s” as the amount. Ten points to Gryffindor if you picked up on the shorthand immediately, but I definitely didn’t. I even called my recipe consultant (hi Mom) but we couldn’t pick an amount that we were super confident about. Then Nate comes in and I mention it as a funny side note and he said “um 3 pounds. It’s a pound sign.” I’d like to blame baby brain but this one is all me.

It called for 6 eggs so I cut the recipe by 6 to keep it simple. While you can totally use half an egg (crack and whisk with a fork to make sure you get an even distribution of yolk and white in each half) I was feeling confident I’d want to eat a whole batch of these beauties.

The cornmeal added a fun crunch texture that helped balance out the softness of the fresh strawberries. I might try roasted strawberries next time to reduce the amount of liquid.

Ok did you know that butter extract is a thing? It smells like movie theater popcorn on steroids and has “natural butter essence” as an ingredient (lightly concerning, not gonna lie.) But it melds into the overall flavor of the cookie like magic and makes them irresistible.

After testing two cookies at different temperatures, I landed on 350F for 15 minutes. Arguably the most common oven temperature for cookies but I still had my baking detective hat on and wanted to be thorough.