Here’s something you can make for your sweetheart this Valentine’s Day. These Strawberry Glazed Ricotta Cookies are a strawberry lovers dream.
The cookie is sweet, soft, and buttery, and the glaze tastes like strawberry jam. It gets its vibrant red color and real strawberry flavor from finely crushed dried strawberries. I love this trick because sometimes when you try to add fresh fruits to frostings or glazes, the moisture makes them too wet, and they don’t set well. This glaze will set and be dry to the touch, but the real strawberry flavor comes through really well too.
I found a 1.2 ounce bag of dried strawberries (which would take about 12 ounces of fresh strawberries to make) at Trader Joe’s. I had seen them at my regular grocery store and they were about half the price at TJ’s.
Strawberry Glazed Ricotta Cookies
Sweet, soft, buttery ricotta cookies with a vibrant strawberry glaze made with dried strawberries.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 45 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 2 1/2 dozen 1x
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Bake
- Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup room temperature butter
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 8 ounces ricotta cheese (made from whole milk)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
For the Glaze
- 1.2 ounce bag dried strawberries, processed to a fine powder
- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 1/4 cup whole milk (or more as needed)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar together. Add egg, ricotta and vanilla extract and mix until well incorporated.
- In a separate bowl, mix flour, salt and baking powder.
- Add the flour mixture into the mixing bowl gradually, mixing on low until a dough is formed. The dough will be sticky.
- Place rounded tablespoons of dough onto a Silpat or parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake for 12-13 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are just browning. Transfer to a cooling rack.
For the Glaze
- In a small bowl, mix the dried strawberry powder and powdered sugar. Whisk in the milk, adding more by the tablespoon until the desired consistency is reached. Spoon glaze over warm cookies.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cookie
- Calories: 124
- Sugar: 13g
- Sodium: 87mg
- Fat: 4g
- Saturated Fat: 2.4g
- Unsaturated Fat: 1.3g
- Trans Fat: 0.1g
- Carbohydrates: 20g
- Fiber: 0.5g
- Protein: 2.1g
- Cholesterol: 17mg
This looks so good but I have a question. Do they make ricotta milk? I have never heard of this.
Julie, thank you for your question. I totally see how that is confusing. I am referring in the recipe ingredients to ricotta cheese made from whole milk. I just usually like to use full fat dairy products in my baking for the best results.
For your ricotta cookies you list 1egg but your directions say add eggs one at a time ?
Thank you for catching that error, Carol. Originally I had doubled the recipe, but then decided to cut it back down. I will fix the directions. I need to be more careful about my proofreading :0)
Thank you for responding so quickly. I am definitely going to make these cookies. They look delicious.
I just made these…I’ve made your ricotta cookies before and they were great. But…this frosting sends them over the top!! Oh my, so good. I found the strawberries at Wegmans. What a fantastic idea to use dried fruit to give them natural flavor and color. Another hit!
Julie, I’m so glad you made these cookies! I could not believe how good the strawberry flavor was the first time I made them. So glad you liked them as much as I did!
Julie these cookies look SO GOOD! I need like 14! They look super moist. Anything that has a glaze I am A ok with 🙂
Thank you Karen… if you haven’t tried that dried strawberry crushed up to make the glazes/frosting trick, it’s so cool! Now my brain can’t stop thinking of ways to use it :0)
Hi Julie,
I am going to make your cookies soon. Any ideas for adding another unique flavor in the batter? I was thinking a drop of the glaze or some fruit puree for color. Any ideas?
Hi Nina, I would be a little careful of adding fruit purees to the batter without adjusting the dry ingredients as well. But you could use an different flavorings or extracts, like almond, to change it up!
Hi Julie,
I am new to baking and really tempted to try out this recipe.
Quick question: Where I am at, we get a lot of fresh strawberries but not the dried ones. Do you think if I substituted dried with fresh, pureed strawberries, and incorporated the other instructions for the glaze, results would be the same?
Thanks a lot!
Aparajita
Hi Aparajita! There will be too much moisture for the glaze to dry if you use fresh strawberries. I think they would still taste delicious, but would be very sticky and wet. Better to use the fresh strawberries in a recipe that calls for those specifically.
Silly question – do they need to be refrigerated after they’re done if you want them to last a couple of days? Thinking with the milk in the glaze it might go bad?
No you don’t need to refrigerate. Adding the sugar sort of stabilizes the milk.
Sorry to ask but as im hypothyroid and shouldn’t do gluten (sucks) is there a gluten free option?
Sorry, I don’t have a gluten free recipe.
Sitting here thinking about how my husband has work on Valentine’s Day this year (he’s a bartender) which is no different than last year. All of a sudden I remembered making these and bringing them to him at work. Omg. They are the BEST! I didn’t change a thing about the recipe and literally had to ration them out between my husband and bar patrons who couldn’t eat hen fast enough. Absolutely making them again this year and so excited!
Aw that’s really sweet, Victoria! I’m so glad they were a hit!
I added about a teaspoon of lemon juice to the glaze. It gave it a nice tang! Great recipe!
is it un salted or salted butter?
You can use either one. If you use unsalted, add a heaping 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Most of my recipes use salted butter, just because that is what I usually have on hand.
5 stars is all that’s really necessary here. If you haven’t made these you are truly missing out. Made them as a new Christmas cookie this year and my husband shared he’ll be eating them all! Also already pondering what other dried fruits I could use in the frosting for other variety. Dried mango cookies?!
Made these for my baby shower tomorrow and they are just delicious. Only thing I did was a bit less sugar in the frosting and they are sweet and creamy cookies with a nice bright red frosting. Thank you Julie!
PS I appreciate your comment about always using salted butter because no way I’m buying unsalted just for baking lol.