Strawberry cheesecake cookies are made with cream cheese and dehydrated strawberries for a soft and sweet cookie version of a strawberry cheesecake. This recipe is simple, the dough does not require refrigerating, and the cookies can be stored on the counter for up to 5 days.

Dehydrated strawberries gives you all the intense flavor of strawberries without the extra water content that comes with fresh strawberries, which will impact the texture of the cookie and complicate making the dough.

Two strawberry cheesecake cookies leaning against a glass of milk with a white background.

Buying Dehydrated Strawberries

Dehydrated strawberries and other berries and fruit are becoming easier and easier to find. They are readily available at Trader Joes. One 1.2oz bag at Trader Joes amounts to 1½ cups, perfect for the cookie dough. Buy a second bag if you’d like to use extra strawberries to decorate with. Target also has dehydrated strawberries at a reasonable price.

You can also find dehydrated strawberries at Whole Foods or a typical grocery store, but they tend to be significantly more expensive than at Target or Trader Joes.

A variety of strawberry cheesecake cookies arranged on a marble background.

About the Ingredients:

Cream Cheese: Use full fat cream cheese for a soft cheesecake cookie.
Butter: I use salted butter, softened. You can soften the butter by taking it out early to soften on the counter or you can microwave at 30% power for 30 seconds at a time until softened.
Granulated Sugar: There is quite a bit of sugar in this recipe. I’ve tried making it with less sugar but it affects the consistency of the cookie. These cookies use only granulated sugar, rather than brown sugar which allows the cookies to stay a nice bright pink when adding the dehydrated strawberries.
Salt: The salt balances the sweetness and brings out the flavor of the butter and the strawberries.
Baking powder: To help the cookies rise.
Vanilla: Enhances the flavor of the cookies, particularly the strawberry.
Egg Yolk: Adds richness. Leaving the egg white out prevents the cookies from being to poofy.
Dehydrated Strawberries: Adds strawberry to the cookies without impacting the consistency of the cookies (which would happen with fresh strawberries). It also makes it easier to mix the dough.
Flour: This recipe uses all-purpose flour.

Dough Does Not Require Refrigerating

This recipe for Strawberry Cheesecake Cookies does not require you to refrigerate the dough. As long as your cream cheese and butter are not overly soft or melty, you will not need to refrigerate the dough prior to baking. If, however, you get pulled away from making the cookies or run out of time, you can absolutely refrigerate the dough and come back to baking them later.

Below is a photo of the dough just after adding the dehydrated strawberries. On the right is a photo of the dough with all of the ingredients prior to shaping and baking.

Cookie Dough just prior to mixing in the flour.

Oven Temperature

These cookies are baked at 325℉ which is slightly lower than typical for cookies. This is to prevent the cookies from browning. It keeps them soft, while ensuring they are cooked through.

Shaping the Strawberry Cheesecake Cookies

When shaping the cookie dough, roll about 2 tbsp worth of dough into a ball and flatten slightly. If you do not flatten the cookies slightly they will stay in a round ball shape.

Decorating Strawberry Cheesecake Cookies

There are plenty of ways to decorate these cookies using sprinkles or colored sugar. However, if you have any extra dehydrated strawberries, you can use them to decorate the cookies. The strawberry powder is just as pretty if not more so than sprinkles.

Add about ½ cup of dehydrated strawberries to a blender (this is after blending some for the cookie dough itself), and blend into a fine powder.

Before Baking: Dip the cookie dough into the powder and place on a baking sheet and bake. This will result in a deeper red color on top.

After Baking: Dip the still warm cookies into the powder. Make sure they are cool enough to handle, but have not yet cooled to room temperature to ensure the strawberry powder sticks to the cookies. Alternatively, sprinkle some of the powder on top of the cookies as they cool.

Storing Strawberry Cheesecake Cookies

Because these cookies are made with simple ingredients (flour, butter, granulated sugar, cream cheese) and dehydrated strawberries, they last on the counter for quite a while. Wrap the strawberry cheesecake cookies in plastic or put them in a plastic baggie and they can be stored on the counter for 5 days.

Strawberry cheesecake cookies topped with dehydrated strawberry powder used as sprinkled for decoration.

If you're interested in more strawberry or dessert recipes, you may love these:

Strawberry Shortbread Cookies: Dense buttery cookies also made with dehydrated strawberries.

Lemon Curd Cookies: Sweet and gooey lemon sugar cookies filled with a tart lemon curd.

Bakery Style White Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut Cookies: Thick chewy cookies filled with white chocolate chips and chopped macadamia nuts.

If you make these cookies, I'd love to hear from you and learn how it went. Leave a rating and a comment down below and let me know how it turns out! Your feedback means a lot!