Strawberry Shortcake Cookies

It is again a long time I have been away from blogging world. Reasons are many. As usual, busy work schedule was one among them. My system was infected with a Trojan for some days. Then again, other things kept me busy even during the long weekends. Little time was left to cooking and blogging :-( Anyways, I have this post sitting in my draft for sometime. So, I thought I must push it a little to get it posted somehow today.

During one of the long weekends we were blessed with in June, we went to visit one of our friends in a nearby town. It had been quite a long time we saw each other and hence had a lot to catch up with.

After a sumptuous meal and a hearty chit chat at her home, we all set out for Strawberry picking in the afternoon. It was a different experience altogether. For those who don't know what this means, let me explain. This is the season for Strawberries here. Farmers who cultivate strawberries open their farms for the public. We can go into the farm, pluck strawberries ourselves and at the end, weigh them and pay. It was my first time on such an expedition and it was totally fun. Taking a basket, walking through the field, searching for the ripe ones, tasting one or two in the meantime and filling our baskets. It was also fun to watch little kids there with their own cute little buckets. Atlast, I was amazed by the cheaper prices for those fresh ones, compared to buying from supermarkets.

Ok now, a load full of Strawberries. What do I do with them? I hate wasting food in any form. But, being poorly organized I am, it sometimes happens that I leave things unattended to in my fridge and end up wasting them. My husband is very strict about this and gets upset with me whenever I waste food. This time, I took a resolution to completely use them. And I am glad it so happened :-)

I prepared the following more than once and we both enjoyed them in full - Strawberry milk shake, Strawberry Breakfast Smoothie from Priya's Easy and Tasty Recipes and Strawberry Shrikhand from Jabeen's Corner.

Still, I wanted to bake something with the rest of them. My intention first was to make a good cake. But, rather settled for cookies, since the flour I bought last time is well suited for cookies. After some intensive search, I landed upon this post - Strawberry Shortcake Cookies. It attracted me at the very first sight and had a beautiful name too. Cookies with fresh fruit pieces to bite upon - sounded exciting!! This is my first experience with a short cake and I was quite anxious too.

The result was absolutely fabulous. Is it the butter? Or the sugar or the cream which gave them such a taste? No no!! It is definitely those wonderful little red ones that made these cookies so lovely and yummy. They just melted in our mouths. I and my husband lost count of how many went in at one shot.

I followed the original recipe as it is. It yielded me nearly 50 cookies like the ones you see in the picture. I prepared them in batches. I left the last batch to bake for a little more time. The result was even more crunchier. I was not sure how long these cookies would hold with fresh fruits in it as it is almost like summer here. So, we finished them all up in 2-3 days. I would definitely bake these again, the next time I get such fresh berries and may be, take them to my office. Dear readers, do give a try!! You would just love it!!

I'm sending this post as an entry to aipi's US Masala - Bookmarked Recipes. See you all next time soon with a Travel post :-)