Cookie Salad? Cookie Salad! This is not your typical salad but with the first local strawberries of the year popping up here in Scandinavia, a smashed cookie salad seemed like a proper way to celebrate.
Every country think their strawberries are the best, but Swedish strawberries around June and July are truly unbeatable. They are plump, deep red, very sweet and so so good simply served in a bowl with just a dash of oat milk or cream. Delicious as that may be, it is not a recipe to blog about or to celebrate summer with. Hence, this cookie salad. We bake a giant cookie, smash (!) it into bits that we layer with strawberries, whipped cream and elderflowers. Apart from the childishly pleasing feeling of smashing cookies, all those oddly sized bits and pieces also are what makes the salad interesting. It has a great mix of textures and flavors, looks pretty and is very simple. It is a good dessert to make for your friends or family. You can bake the cookie ahead of time (or use any store-bought cookie) and ideally, you want to smash the cookie and assemble the salad in front of your guests. We’ve gathered a few recipe notes and suggestions how to change it up here below.
But first, check out the recipe video we made. Luise is doing a little intro talk in this video and we’d love to hear if you like us to develop this style more, or if you prefer them with just music. We are having a bit of hard time deciding ourselves.
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Recipe notes:
• We made the cookie vegan to make it as inclusive as possible but you can replace coconut oil with butter if you are more into that. Vegans would obviously also use whipped coconut cream or whipped soy cream.
• Use cert gluten-free oats if you are gluten intolerant.
• The buckwheat flour can be replaced with regular flour if you like.
• You can make this into an Eton Mess by adding a larger amount of cream (and maybe even meringues) and serving it in glasses.
• You can swap the whipped cream for greek yogurt and serve this as a weekend breakfast. Or do 50/50 cream and yogurt for a more tangy dessert.
• If you have mint or lemon balm at home, those would be great additions to the salad.
• You can add any edible flowers and they are of course also entirely optional.
• If your berries are imported or not sweet enough, simply drizzle a little maple syrup, honey or elderflower syrup over the salad.
Strawberry and Smashed Cookie Salad
Vegan Chocolate Oat Cookies
200 g / 2 cups rolled oats
65 g / ½ cup buckwheat flour
4 tbsp cacao powder
3 tbsp chia seeds
150 g / 1 cup mixed almonds and pumpkin seeds (or any other nuts or seeds), coarsely chopped
½ tsp sea salt
110 g / ½ cup coconut oil or butter
125 ml / ½ cup maple syrup
125 ml / ½ cup plant milk
Salad elements
450 g / 1 lb fresh strawberries
1 knob fresh ginger, grated
1 small lemon, juice
elderflower and lilacs or other edible summer flowers
250 ml / 1 cup whipping cream or whipped coconut cream (or Greek yogurt)
Set the oven to 200°C/400°F. Mix together the dry ingredients in one bowl. Add coconut oil, maple syrup and plant milk. Stir together and let sit for 20 minutes to allow the chia seeds and oats to thicken. Meanwhile, rinse the strawberries, cut in halves and place in a mixing bowl. Add grated ginger, lemon juice and a few elderflower florets (and honey or maple syrup if you don’t think your berries are sweet enough). Leave to infuse while you whip the cream. Pour onto a baking sheet covered with a baking paper. Flatten out and shape a large, round cookie using your hands. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or until golden and firm (it will firm up more once it cools). Leave to cool and then crush the cookie into pieces. Transfer the juicy strawberries to a large serving platter. Add dollops of whipped cream (or yogurt) and tuck in the pieces of broken cookie all over. Scatter over the cookie crumbles and decorate with more elderflowers and lilacs. Crush a few strawberries in your palm to drizzle strawberry juice over the cream. Serve and enjoy!
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