These cookies are a riff of the popular strawberry crunchies you get on a strawberry shortcake ice cream bar! My vegan strawberry crunch is vegan butter, golden oreos, and freeze dried strawberries, which make for a highly addicting topping. It is then added to a vegan sugar cookie base to create an amazing vegan strawberry crunch cookie.
Strawberry Crunch
The main star of this show is the vegan strawberry crunch. It is quite simple to make. I tested making the crunch by changing butter/cookie ratio, cooking times/temperatures and amount of strawberry in them. Then I had to figure out how much strawberry crunch is a good amount to put in these vegan strawberry crunch cookies (spoiler alert: a lot of crunch makes for a better cookie).
To make the strawberry crunch is quite simple. First add freeze dried strawberries in the food processor. The reasoning is that I want the strawberries to be finely ground where the other ingredients I do not. So I first grind the strawberries into a fine powder. THEN add in my cookies and just pulse a few times to end up with some smaller pieces. When you are buying ingredients, make sure you are buying freeze dried strawberries and not dried strawberries. Dried strawberries are a bit gummy still, and freeze dried are fully dried and will yield the best results. You can buy them here, but should be able to find them in most grocery stores. As for the Golden Oreos, any vanilla sandwich cookie will do! Golden Oreos are widely available in the United States so that is what I us.
Finally you can then transfer to a bowl and add your melted butter and salt, and just toss around to coat. You want to bake the strawberry crunch at a low temperature. Otherwise it will burn and brown too quickly before the crunch gets to set up. The lower temperature allows the strawberry crunch to get a bit crunchy, which is perfect for these vegan strawberry crunch cookies.
Vegan Sugar Cookies
The final step is to create a vegan sugar cookie dough, which is simple to make. This cookie dough is quite similar to my vegan blueberry cookies. It really is the perfect cookie to add stuff into. It is important to cream your butter and sugar together correctly, as you need some air in this cookie so it does not become dense. You really want to cream it together for 2-3 minutes. An additional note is that if your butter is not room temperature and is still cold this process might take longer. Or if your butter is too warm it won’t cream together at all and you will end up with a dense cookie. So making sure your vegan butter is the right temperature is crucial.
While testing out these vegan strawberry crunch cookies, I tried chilling the dough and baking straight after making the dough. It wasn’t really that important to chill the dough in this case. Usually I am a stickler for chilling cooke dough, but it’s only when you actually need to. If you do want to chill the dough, you can! It works both ways, but I just didn’t see a huge difference to warrant the chilling.
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Vegan Strawberry Crunch Cookies
- V
- VG
- DF
Nutrition per portion
Ingredients
- Strawberry Crunch
- 1 cup (17g) Freeze Dried Strawberries
- 13 Golden Oreos
- ¼ cup (56g) Unsalted Vegan Butter, Melted
- ¼ tsp Kosher Salt
- Strawberry Crunch Cookies
- ½ cup (113g) Unsalted Vegan Butter, Room Temperature
- ½ cup (100g) Granulated Sugar
- ¼ cup (55g) Brown Sugar
- ¼ cup Oat Milk, or Any Other Non-Dairy Milk
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 ¾ cups (231g) All Purpose Flour
- ½ tbsp Cornstarch
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- ½ tsp Baking Soda
- ½ tsp Kosher Salt
Method
Make the Strawberry Crunch:- Preheat your oven to 325°F.
- In the bowl of a food processor, add the freeze dried strawberries. Pulse until the strawberries are a fine powder, and most clumps are broken down.
- Add in the golden oreos, and pulse 15-20 times until the cookies are no bigger than the size of a pea.
- Transfer the strawberry oreo mixture into a bowl, add the melted butter and salt, and mix to coat.
- Transfer to baking sheet lined with parchment paper and spread into an even layer.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes until very lightly browned and fragrant. Keep a close eye, as the strawberry crunch can burn easily!
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- Preheat your oven to 350°F.
- In a medium bowl, sift the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, add the room temperature vegan butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar. Mix with a hand mixer on medium/high until the butter is light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes.
- Add in the oat milk, and vanilla extract, and mix until combined for about 1 minute.
- Add in about half of the flour mixture into the butter sugar mixture. Mix with a hand mixer on low until combined. Add the remaining flour and mix until just combined.
- Add in about ¾ of the strawberry crunch, and fold into the cookie dough with a rubber spatula.
- Scoop the dough out with an ice cream disher (approximately 2 ¾ ounces per scoop) onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Bake in the oven for 16-18 minutes until lightly brown around the edges. Remove from the oven and top with remaining strawberry crunch. Let cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes to set up. After you can remove the cookies to further cool on a cooling rack.
