Strawberry Crumb Cake Cookies are worthy of the best berries

These strawberry crumb cake cookies are a jam-swirled soft strawberry cookie topped with fresh strawberry slices and stripes of strawberry glaze and a crunchy crumb topping.

If you like big berry flavor in a pretty, easy-to-decorate cookie, this recipe is right up your alley.

Taste	Texture
Bright fresh berry + orange +cardamom	Soft, crunchy, tender

Active time	Total time	Yield	Difficulty
25 min	50 min	13 big cookies	Medium

this …

Why you’ll want to make a batch of strawberry crumb cake cookies

1. Better than the bakery: You’d be hard pressed to find a cookie this good at a bakery, and if you could, it’d be probably $5/cookie, and it wouldn’t have the fresh quality ingredients in this recipe.
2. So much texture and flavor: There’s tenderness from the soft sugar cookie base and fresh strawberry slices, and big crunch from the crumb topping. If you could put strawberry crisp into a cookie, they’d be like these.
3. Triple strawberry flavor: Along with the slices of fresh strawberries, there’s even bigger berry flavor from the swirls of thick strawberry jam in the dough and the stripes of strawberry glaze on top the cookies made with freeze dried strawberries for the pretty pink color.
4. They’re just so pretty: If we eat with our eyes first, this is a cookie that wants to be eaten. Any place you need a pink cookie, this will get a lot of attention.
5. Look complicated, actually easy to make: I kicked up the degree of difficulty to “medium” in my intro only because the ingredient list looks long. In reality, most everything you need is pantry ingredients. Other than the strawberries and the orange, everything else comprises regular baking ingredients. If you make streusel like I do, keeping a bag on hand AT ALL TIMES in the freezer, these cookies are a cinch and won’t take you long.

Process for making strawberry crumb cake cookies

1. Mix up the streusel: Smash the cardamom pods

   (Affiliate)

   to release the seeds and then grind the cardamom. Mix the cardamom with the flour, and brown sugar in a small bowl. Stir in the melted butter to form crumbs. Place the bowl in the freezer while you prep everything else. If you’re using frozen streusel you already made, you can skip this step.
2. Make the jam: Boil up the strawberries and sugar for the jam. As the berries soften, mash them with a potato masher

   (Affiliate)

   or whiz them up with an immersion blender

   (Affiliate)

   . Cook the jam down until it is very thick and holds its shape on a spoon without falling off.
3. Make the cookie dough: Whisk the oil together with the vanilla and the orange juice. Beat the butter in a stand mixer or with a hand mixer just to soften it.  Slowly drizzle in the oil with the mixer on until you have a smooth mixture of butter and oil.  Add in the sugars and beat to combine. Mix in the egg and orange zest.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl, and then mix for a few more seconds until you have a very smooth batter. Whisk the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt in another bowl. With the mixer on, slowly add the flour to the liquid mixture just until combined.
4. Mix in the jam: Take the bowl off the mixer and spread the dough up the sides of the bowl. Use a spoon to dot the dough with the jam randomly over the dough.  Scrape the dough over itself to make random swirls of blue in the dough.  Only fold the dough 4 or 5 times so that you get the swirled look.  If you mix in the jam thoroughly, you’ll lose the marbled effect.
5. Slice and dry the strawberries: Slice the fresh strawberries vertically through the stem end into 4 or 5 slices per strawberry. Place the slices on paper towels. Press on the berries lightly to remove any excess juice on the berries.
6. Scoop: Portion out the cookies with a 2 oz. scoop and place the dough balls 6 or 7 to a sheet. Place 3 strawberry slices on the top of each dough ball. If you’d like the berries to be a little closer together as they bake, overlap the points in the middle slightly.
7. Bake the cookies at 350 for 12 minutes total, pausing halfway through to rotate the pans 180 degrees and swap the position of the trays in the oven.
8. Bake the streusel: Bake the streusel for 8-10 minutes until it’s lightly brown. I pop mine in a toaster oven while the cookies are baking to save time, but you can bake it while the cookies are cooling. Let the streusel cool while you glaze the cookies.
9. Decorate: Mix up the strawberry glaze ingredients, adding just enough milk to make a drizzly consistency. Scrape the glaze into a small plastic bag. Clip the corner of the bag and squeeze out zigzags of glaze between the strawberry slices on the top of each cookie. Sprinkle each cookie with some of the crunchy streusel.

Tips for making the best strawberry crumb cookies

1. Reduce down the jam: If the jam in this cookie is too runny, it will break apart the cookie matrix as they baking, causing the cookies to spread too far. Keep cooking the jam down until you can turn a spoon filled with it upside down without the jam going anywhere.
2. Don’t overfold in the jam: Fold in the jam with 3 or 4 lazy folds with a baking spatula

   (Affiliate)

   . This will give you nice swirls in the cookies. They won’t bake up as dramatic as they do in the lemon blueberry cookies, but still, you’ll know they’re there!
3. Definitely dab the strawberry slices: Fresh strawberries can be juicy, and if they’re too juicy, they’ll slice right off the top of the cookie. Just as I suggest in my strawberry muffins, dab the strawberry slices with paper towels to absorb any rogue juices before you top the cookies with them.
4. Bake the streusel cold: Cold streusel stays clumpy (good!). That’s because the cold butter will take longer to melt in a hot oven, giving the streusel clumps time to set and brown before the butter melts out all over the place. If you bake the streusel at room temperature here, it will turn into a fine powder and not the glorious crumbs you want.

Strawberry Crumb Cake Cookies

---

5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star

No reviews

• Author: Elizabeth Farr
• Total Time: 1 hour 25 minutes
• Yield: 13 big cookies 1x

Print Recipe

Pin Recipe

Description

With strawberry jam swirled into orange scented soft sugar cookie dough then topped with more strawberry slices and some crunchy cardamom streusel and a swizzle of pinky pink strawberry glaze, these cookies are as pretty as they are good to eat.

---

Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

Cardamom streusel

• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour (85 g)
• 1/3 cup light brown sugar (70 g)
• 3 tablespoons melted butter (42 g)
• 2 green cardamom pods

  (Affiliate)

Quick thick strawberry jam

• 1 cup strawberries, fresh or frozen
• 2 Tablespoons granulated sugar

Orange sugar cookie dough

• 3 tablespoons oil (preferably cold-pressed safflower or sunflower, see note) (45 mL)
• 2 Tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla paste
• 1 sticks butter, at room temperature (113 g)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar (100 g)
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar (60 g)
• 1 large egg
• Zest from 1 orange, grated
• 2 cups + 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour (276 g)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup fresh strawberries, sliced into 4–5 slices each

Strawberry glaze

• 3/4 cup powdered sugar (90 g)
• 1 tablespoon freeze dried strawberry powder

  (Affiliate)

  or any leftover strawberry jam
• 1–2 tablespoons milk

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

---

Instructions

Mix up the streusel

 

1. Press on the cardamom pods

   (Affiliate)

   so that they split. Remove the green outer covering, then crush the seeds in a mortar or pestle or spice grinder to a fine texture. 
2. To make the streusel, In a small bowl, mix the flour, brown sugar and cardamom together until the sugar is evenly distributed in the flour.
3. Pour in the melted butter, then use a fork to toss the ingredients together. Stir everything together until the crumbs start to form. 
4. Cover the bowl, and freeze the mixture until you bake the cookies.

Make the strawberry jam

1. Pour the berries and sugar in a small pot over medium heat with 1 tablespoon of water.
2. Cook until the berries start to burst, and then smash the berries a bit with a potato masher

   (Affiliate)

   .  For smoother jam, you can blitz everything with an immersion blender

   (Affiliate)

   , if you have one.
3. Keep cooking, lowering the heat to medium-low until the berries start to thicken, about 8-10 minutes.  When the jam sits on an upside-down spoon without falling off, turn off the heat and let the jam cool.  You’ll have about 1/4 cup of thick jam at the end.

Make the cookie dough

1. Whisk the oil together with the vanilla and the orange juice.
2. Beat the butter in a stand mixer or with a hand mixer just to soften it.  Slowly drizzle in the oil with the mixer on until you have a smooth mixture of butter and oil.
3. Add in the sugars and beat to combine.
4. Mix in the egg and orange zest.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl, and then mix for a few more seconds until you have a very smooth batter.
5. Whisk the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt in another bowl.
6. With the mixer on, slowly add the flour to the liquid mixture just until combined.
7. Take the bowl off the mixer and spread the dough up the sides of the bowl. Use a spoon to dot the dough with the jam randomly over the dough.  It’s okay if you have a little leftover jam.
8. Scrape the dough over itself to make random swirls of red in the dough.  Only fold the dough 4 or 5 times so that you get the swirled look.  If you mix in the jam thoroughly, you’ll lose the marbled effect.
9. Chill the dough for 30 minutes.

Bake the cookies

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C).  Line 2 sheet trays with parchment

   (Affiliate)

   .
2. Spread the sliced strawberries on paper towels.  Press the towels over the berries firmly to dab off any juice on the surface of the berries.  Don’t press so hard that the berries squish!
3. Place 6 balls on a sheet tray for baking.  You should be able to bake both trays at the same time.
4. Press 3 strawberry slices into the tops of each cookie.  The slices will spread out to the edges during baking, but if you overlap the points of the slices in the center of the cookie, they will do so less. 
5. Bake the cookies for 8 minutes, and then rotate the sheets 180 degrees and then swap the racks each one is on for the other rack.  Bake the cookies for 8-10 more minutes until the middles no longer make an indentation if you poke them.
6. Allow the cookies to cool for about 5 minutes before moving them to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Decorating the cookies

1. Scatter the streusel on a baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes until it is lightly golden.
2. Mix up the strawberry glaze ingredients, adding just enough milk to make a drizzly consistency. Scrape the glaze into a small plastic bag. Clip the corner of the bag and squeeze out zigzags of glaze between the strawberry slices on the top of each cookie. Sprinkle each cookie with some of the crunchy streusel. 
3. Store the cookies in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week.  You can also freeze these cookies or the dough itself for up to 3 months.

Equipment

immersion blender

Buy Now →

potato masher

Buy Now →

parchment

Buy Now →

Vollrath yellow scoop

Buy Now →

(Affiliate)

Notes

I’ve moved away from using industrial seed oils in my cooking.  For these cookies, you really do want the softness that oil gives to baked goods.  As such, try to use neutral unrefined, high oleic or cold pressed oils like safflower, sunflower.  La Tourangelle makes some really good oils that will change how you think about oil.  Olive oil is good too, though it gives these cookies a distinct Mediterranean flavor (add some lemon or orange zest if you do use olive oil and they’ll taste like Sicily).

• Prep Time: 25 minutes
• + 30 minutes chilling time:
• Cook Time: 30 minutes
• Category: Cookies
• Method: Baking, Stovetop
• Cuisine: American