Neapolitan Cookies
Posted On 7 January 2022
Inspired by 100 Cookies but tweaked quite a bit.
I wouldn’t play with the strawberry content too much as the freeze-dried strawberries really pack a punch even at just 9 grams. But the color isn’t very strawberry-ish, so I really recommend adding a couple of drops of food coloring.
Neapolitan Cookies
Tri-colored, tri-flavored cookies.
Servings: 36 Cookies
Equipment
- Stand mixer (optional)
Ingredients
- 365 grams all-purpose flour
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- 9 grams freeze-dried strawberries
- 227 grams unsalted butter, room temperature (2 sticks)
- 350 grams baker's sugar (fine granulated sugar, caster sugar)
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 5-6 drops red food coloring (gel if possible) (optional)
- 2 tablespoons Dutch process cocoa powder
- turbinado sugar (optional)
- White, pink (or red), and brown sprinkles (optional)
Instructions
Making The Doughs
- Mix the flour, soda, and salt in a bowl and set asidde
- In a food processor/chopper grind the strawberries to a powder. I suppose you could do this with a mortar-and-pestle or a rolling pin, too. My chopper is particularly awful so I always have to mortar up some of them.
- In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle beat the butter until creamy. Scrape down the sides.
- Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy. A couple of minutes. Scrape down the sides.
- Add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla and beat until combined, scraping down the sides as necessary.
- Add the flour a bit at a time and beat on low speed until combined. If your mixer is like mine, you'll need to scrape it down a few times.
- Dump the dough out of your mixer and weigh. Should be around 1000 grams but could be more or less. Divide into 3 equal portions. (And you thought you'd never need math after you left school!)
- Put one chunk aside. That's your "white" section.
- Put one chunk in the mixer and, on low, add the powdered strawberries and, if using, the food coloring. (The pulverized strawberries won't make it very red; thus the food coloring.)
- Remove the strawberry dough from the mixer, wipe out the mixer and wipe off the paddle. Then add another dough portion to the mixer and mix slowly with the cocoa powder until well blended and even colored.
- Heat oven to 350°F / 175°C
Assembly
- Line 2-3 sheet pans with parchment paper.
- My recommendation here is to take one of the doughs and a scale and divide by 36 and take portions around that weight and set on a plate. Typically each portion should be 9-10 grams each. At the end of this process you should have a plate of 36 "white," 36 chocolate, and 36 strawberry pieces of dough.
- Optional: Roll the plain balls in white sprinkles, the chocolate in brown sprinkles, and the strawberry in pink sprinkles. (See notes.)
- Take a plain bit of dough and put a chocolate on one side and a strawberry on the other. Roll gently in your palms to make a ball but not merge the colors together.
- Put on sheet pan 2" apart. You should be able to get 12 balls on each. Don't crowd as they'll spread quite a bit in baking.
- Optional. If you're not doing the sprinkles, put the turbinado sugar into a bowl and roll the assembled cookies in it to coat.
- Bake for 10-11 minutes turning half-way through. Edges should be set and starting to crack. Remove from the oven and let rest on the sheet pan for another 10 minutes before removing to a cooling rack. They'll deflate to flat.
- Repeat with remaining cookies.
Notes
- The artistic among you may want to experiment with sprinkles. For example: roll the chocolate in pink, the plain in brown, and the strawberry in white. Use some other colors.
- I think I’m going to do this at Christmas without the strawberry or chocolate and just divide the dough into two and add red food coloring to one and green to the other and then do 15 gram segments, merged, and baked for a two-tone holiday cookie.
- For ease, use a 1 teaspoon cookie scoop and scoop well-rounded portions out. You might get fewer cookies but it’ll be easier than measuring them all out.
