Strawberries and Cream Cookies

I made these for the first time yesterday and HOLY COW! So yummy! It was a nice change from a normal chocolate chip cookie, but still nice and sweet. :0)

3/4 c. sugar
1 c. unsalted butter, softened
2 c. flour
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. whipping cream
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. minced white chocolate
3/4 c. dried strawberries, coarsely minced

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Stack two baking sheets together and line top sheet with parchment paper.
In a food processor, whiz sugar to finely pulverize, about 10 seconds.
In a mixer bowl, cream sugar and butter on low speed until well blended. Then add flour, vanilla, cream, and salt and blend well. When alsmot blended into a dough, add white chocolate and dried strawberries, mixing by hand to incorporate and make a firm dough.
Knead dough gently on a lightly floured work surface about 1 minute to make dough more firm and get it to hold together. Flatten dough into a disk, wrap well, and refrigerate 30 minutes.
Roll out gently about 1/2 inch thick and cut into small round cookies {about 2 inches in diameter}.
Place on prepared baking sheets. Place in oven and immediately reduce oven temperature to 300 degrees. Bake until lightly browned around edges, about 40-50 minutes. Cool well before removing with a metal spatula.

Ashlee side note: Ok, so I changed a few things because I am super lazy. :0)
I couldn't find dried strawberries anywhere in town. If you find them...please let me know. The book says you can find them on nutsonline.com, so you can try there.
I bought freeze dried strawberries at Fred Meyer, because that's the best I could find. They are like the kind you find in your cereal box. :0) So, when added to liquid, they reconstitute and become soft. Make sense? Just make sure you dry them well before adding them to the dough and mix extra carefully.
I also did not pulverize the sugar. Does this really make a huge difference? Maybe so, but I couldn't tell the difference and the cookies turned out wicked awesome yummy.
And....I used white chocolate chips instead of mincing white chocolate. :0)
So....as many of you know I am SUPER lazy when it comes to making several trays of cookies. It takes WAY too long. I did the first tray using a glass cup to cut the cookies into circles. But seriously....it took 40 minutes to bake these babies. I wasn't going to sit around for several more hours doing them. :0) So, with the rest of the dough, I made a BIG cookie cake. I used my circle Springform pan and pressed the dough into the bottom of the pan {after spraying with nonstick spray}. It was about 1/4 inch thick. I still placed it on a second baking sheet like the recipe called for, and still baked it for 40 minutes. And honestly....I liked this cookie better. Because this is a shortbread kind of cookie, they are supposed to be crunchy. I prefer soft cookies, and baking the dough into a big cookie meant that the dough was softer. Why? Not a clue. I just cut the cookie into pie slices and ate them. Good stuff.

See? Lazy. But I baked something and these were SO good. Try it! You'll like it!