Strawberry Cookies?

Tonight I was too tired to try another vintage recipe, but was talking to my husband about how we never eat all the strawberries we buy, and I should bake something. He said he'd never seen a strawberry cookie made with fresh strawberries. I started going through my many many cookbooks - vintage and modern, and he's pretty much correct. I saw a few bar recipes, lots with frozen strawberries, but no fresh. I found this one on the Internet after some searching: (Another internet recipe suggested using a dehydrator - for real!)

Strawberry Cake Cookies
Submitted by: Sierra

"Easy strawberry cookies made with strawberry cake mix and fresh strawberries. "
Original recipe yield: 2 1/2 dozen.
Prep Time:
10 Minutes
Cook Time:
15 Minutes
Ready In:
30 Minutes
Servings:
30 (change)
INGREDIENTS:
· 1 (18.25 ounce) package strawberry cake mix
· 2 eggs, beaten
· 1/2 cup chopped fresh strawberries
· 1 cup whipped cream
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the cake mix, eggs and strawberries until well blended. Fold in the whipped cream until well blended. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
http://cookie.allrecipes.com/AZ/StrwbrryCkCkis.asp?addtolist=1?

But - I decided to try the Chocolate Strawberry Muffins from one of my favorite cookbooks:

The Muffin Lady by Linda Fisher has great anecdotes about her family history and how she ended up selling her fabulous baked goods to support herself. She started with a variation of her mother's Pancake Batter recipe in muffin form and went from there. I have done the Chocolate Chip muffins many times from this book - they are my husband's favorites. But the chocolate strawberry are fabulous. They use unsweetened cocoa and a fresh strawberry in the middle. This book is from 1997, not quite vintage, but definitely worth seeking out. The copyrights are pretty strict on this, so I won't type out the recipe, but see if your library has one!

Here are the results. Note: I love shaped muffin pans, and used my silicon flower shaped ones and my hearts for this. I am looking all over for stars... Note that I made 3 plain chocolate ones - my husband of the strawberry cookie challenge doesn't even like strawberries!
















I took the train downtown today to meet with some fabulous folks (www.ala.org/yalsa) and finished a wonderful teen mystery. I will be reviewing it for Crimespree magazine http://www.crimespreemag.com/contact.html but here's a teaser. The Night My Sister Went Missing is by Carol Plum-Ucci who is pretty much the best teen mystery author currently writing. Kurt's sister disappears off a pier at a party. A shot was heard, and yet no splash was heard. It has the feel of a great closed-door mystery, and it will be out in November. I finished the last few pages while the muffins baked and my little guy played trains.