Putting freeze dried strawberry into my soft cookies,the texture is more like cake -how to make it more chewy

Question

I love strawberry cheesecake and soft cookies, so I created a recipe and added a large amount of strawberry powder (made by putting freeze-dried strawberries into a grinder).

I have tried two recipes. Both have the same ingredients except the flour.

Recipe A: I used all purpose flour. It results in cakey soft cookies; the texture is not smooth and not gooey/chewy. They can break quite easily.

Recipe B: I used bread flour. It results in a better texture, more dense and smooth but still cakey and not gooey/chewy. However, while they are great right after taking them out of the oven or not long after putting them in the fridge, they become too soft after taking them out of the fridge for a long time.

Could you please advise how to make this more like soft/chewy and gooey cookie? I have tried changing ingredients a few times, but it turns out worse. For example, I use 2.5 g baking soda instead of 5 g baking powder, and it resulted in a less breakable yet more cakey and dry cookie. I mixed bread flour with all purpose flour and it resulted in a less smooth texture. I tried baking them longer but it resulted in a dense and cakey cookie.

I don't want to decrease or change the amount of freeze dried strawberry and sugar because the taste right now is perfect. Everyone around me loves the taste, the problem is the texture.

Updates: here is the update of recipe that I tried and it works! Pls see below

Answer 1

I believe that by cooking the dry strawberry powder in your cookie mixture, you are inadvertently rehydrating the strawberry substance with the small amount of liquid available within your mixture, primarily from the butter. This isn't necessarily an issue, but like you noticed it does mean that you have less liquid for the rest of the cookie to make use of, resulting in relative dryness, denseness, and graininess.

Rather than decreasing another ingredient, I believe increasing the butter by about 65g (a similar ratio as what you have between flour:butter) may help with your list of issues.

This does give you a significantly high butter:flour ratio, which may cause your cookies to soften too much, but I believe that the extra, slightly absorbent material added by the strawberry powder ought to bring things a bit more in-line with your expectations.

If you're feeling a bit more cautious, you could try adding only 38g of additional butter, such that in the absolute worst-case scenario you only have a 1:1 flour:butter ratio for your cookies, which is still within relatively normal expectations, albeit a much thinner cookie, but will hopefully normalize out with the strawberry powder.

Best of luck with the cookies, and I hope you let us know how it goes! I love strawberry. :)

Answer 2

I did an experiment with chocolate chip cookies at one point very similar to this, have you tried subbing out the butter for margarine? If you want a crispier cookie, butter is the way to go, however, margarine leads to a softer, chewier cookie in my experience. I agree with Onyz that you’ll most likely need to increase either the butter/margarine or other liquids in the batter to combat the strawberries becoming rehydrated too, so I would suggest their measurements for increasing the fat to flour ratio. Hope this helps!