A strawberry pretzel salad was foreign to me until about three weeks ago when I saw a photo of a slice of pie with an almost fluorescent red jello layer studded with uneven pieces of strawberry sitting on top of a creamy filling and what was of most interest to me: pretzel crust. One thing to know about me is that pretzels are never my snack of choice, but it will always be one of my favourite flavours. The distinct malty, toasty, and predominately saltiness of pretzels will always be my preference, unless its in its original form. I’ve been making my pretzel shortbread year after year, especially during the holidays for cookie boxes and I’ve always been experimenting with a pretzel chocolate chip cookie where ground pretzels step in for regular all-purpose flour to form the foundation of the cookie.
That is how this cookie was born — a converging of my desires to perfect a pretzel chocolate chip cookie and my intrigue that stems for a strawberry pretzel salad. If you look at the recipe briefly, it resembles a classic chocolate chip cookie but there are different pretzel nuances found in and on the cookie. Ground pretzels help form the dough of the cookie, but it’s ‘pretzel-ness’ is doubled with the shiny pretzel brittle that tops each cookie. Strawberry jam (homemade or store-bought) is swirled into the dough and pools of white chocolate acts as the creamy filling of a traditional slice of strawberry pretzel salad. Unlike all my other cookies, this cookie is not top with a generous sprinkle of Maldon salt and that was intentional and not an oversight. The pretzels bring enough saltiness to the cookie and I want the sweet notes to be the dominant ones here.
Strawberry Pretzel Salad Cookie
Ingredients
Pretzel Brittle
- 80 g (2 cups) mini pretzels
- 42 g (3 tbsp) unsalted butter, melted
- 40 g (3 tbsp) granulated sugar
Pretzel Cookie Dough
- 140 g (1/2 cup and 2 tbsp) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 126 g (1/2 cup and 2 tbsp) brown sugae
- 100 g (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 120 g all-purpose flour
- 120 g (2 2/3 cup) mini pretzels
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 240 g (1 1/3 cup) white chocolate, coarsely chopped
- 110 g (1/3 cup) strawberry jam
Instructions
Pretzel Brittle
- Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Spread out pretzels in a single layer on lined baking sheet. Evenly pour butter over pretzels and sprinkle sugar on top.
- Bake pretzels until the butter and sugar have caramelized, about 8 – 10 minutes.
- Remove from oven and allow pretzel brittle to cool completely. Break brittle into large pieces, about 3 – 5 (or more!) pretzels per piece. You want to have a minimum of 14 brittle pieces for the 14 cookies.
Pretzel Cookie Dough
- Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar on medium speed until they are smooth, about 1 minute.
- Add the vanilla and egg to the butter mixture and mix on medium speed until they are fully incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
- In a food processor, grind pretzels into a fine flour, some coarser pieces are okay. This is your pretzel flour.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, pretzel flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture in two batches to the butter mixture, and mix until the ingredients are just combined, about 1 minute.
- Add white chocolate pieces to the bowl, and mix until they are just incorporated with the dough, about 30 seconds.
- Dollop strawberry jam into the dough and gently fold the jam to form ribbons in the dough.
- With a standard ice cream scoop, form 14 even balls of dough.
- Place filled dough balls about 2 inches apart on the baking sheet. If there are big puddles of jam on the edges of the dough balls, use a spoon or spatula to push the jam upwards onto the dough ball. Jam that is close to the pan will burn much quickly than the time it takes the cookie to cook.
- Bake the cookies for 12 to 14 minutes, or until the cookies are browned and caramelized along the edges and the centres are just set. If you would like your cookies to have the crinkled edges, give the pan a few taps on the oven rack before you take them out of the oven.
- Upon taking the cookies out of the oven, gently press a piece of pretzel onto each cookie. Pushing the brittle onto exposed white chocolate will help the brittle adhere to the cookie.
- Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
![day two: sparkly matcha neapolitan shortbread cookies ✨
the instructions might seem confusing, but if you watch the video to see how the different flavour layers are stacked, it will make much more sense! these slice and bake cookies freeze extremely well so you can make the dough now and bake them off when you want to gift them. (makes 40-44)
vanilla dough:
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g (6 tbsp) powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
matcha dough:
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g (6 tbsp) powdered sugar
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
2 tsp culinary matcha powder
1/4 tsp salt
strawberry dough
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g 6 tbsp) powdered sugar
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
2 tbsp freeze-dried strawberry powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg white
coarse sanding sugar
for the vanilla dough, combine butter and powdered sugar in a bowl. mix until smooth. add vanilla. add flour and salt and mix until no dry streaks remain. do the same for the matcha and strawberry doughs in separate bowls
place one portion of the dough between two pieces of parchment paper and roll into a 5 x 9-inch rectangle that is about 1/4-inch thick. slide rolled out dough onto a baking sheet and freeze for 10 min until firm. repeat this step with the other portions of dough
remove the top piece of parchment from each slab and stack the strawberry, vanilla, and matcha dough layers. cut the slab down the middle the long way to form two 2.5 x 9-inch rectangles. with one half, carefully swap the order of the layers (example: if the first half of the dough is stacked svm, swap the second half so it’s msv. this will ensure that same flavour squares don’t stack on each other). stack the halves. press the layers gently to adhere them. return the stacked dough to the freezer for another 10min
[recipe cont’d in comments]
#christmasbaking #christmascookies #holidaybaking #holidaycookies #cookiedecorating](https://constellationinspiration.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
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