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The sweet smell of lavender perfumed my house all weekend. A welcomed by-product of my experimentation with the dried mild pink flowers of a Melissa lavender plant that I brought back from a visit to Sunshine Herb and Lavender Farm in Sequim, Washington.
I already had a little jar of the brightly colored culinary lavender in my pantry at home bought on an outing with a herbs de Provence, which I always have on hand, I hadn’t cooked with lavender as the star herb.
What I didn’t know when I bought that first jar, is that there are several culinary varieties of lavender to choose from. Wandering around the culinary aisle at Sunshine, I found that some are best for coffees and teas, others are best for savory, and still others for baking.
After reading all the descriptions, I opted to bring home the big 3 cup bag of Melissa – sweet and milder than Royal Velvet and the even heavier camphor tasting Provence – since I had already decided that my first foray into my lavender adventure was going to be cookies. Shortbread to be exact.
Why shortbread? Because one of my two favorite desserts at my local go-to place for an evening of coffee and desserts has a lavender shortbread on the menu that I absolutely adore. I’ve been chopping at the bit to try my hand at it for years.
It took me several tries to get this right. The first time around was an epic fail.
I researched for days and came up with a modified version using the preferred method for the lavender use common in all the recipes: grinding 2 teaspoons of dried lavender buds in a tablespoon of sugar to really pulverize the heck out of the buds. Do you know what happens when you chop herbs? Their essential oils come out. Do you know how much essential oil 2 teaspoons, pulverized beyond recognition, releases? Epic fail amounts. Biting into a cookie from that first batch was like biting into a bar of lavender soap. Yuck!
I tossed out my research and went with my gut.
The result? While not exactly Extraordinary Desserts quality, it is quite tasty and considering that the ingredients to make an entire batch of cookies is less than coffee and a cookie there, I’m more than delighted at my creation.
My biggest lesson learned? A little goes a long way. I mean, seriously. It’s a fine line between yummy and eating your body lotion. I read somewhere that cooking with lavender is like cooking with vanilla: you can’t necessarily taste it but you know it’s there and life is a little sweeter because it is.
Next lavender adventure? Lavender pound cake. Oh, wait, maybe lavender scented roasted chicken. Hmm, I wonder how lavender would taste in salad dressing? So many possibilities!
My suggestion to you? Get out to your local farmers market, pick some up and get experimenting! I’d love to hear about all the wonderful ways you’ve come up with to use this sweet smelling herb.
makes 20 large 3” round cookies
8 ounces sweet butter (2 sticks of the highest quality you can afford)3/4 cup powdered sugar1 teaspoon bourbon vanilla extract2 cups white flour, plus teaspoons (plain, not self-rising)1 cup cornstarch1/2 teaspoon salt1 1/2 teaspoons whole Melissa lavender buds (or generic culinary lavender except Provence)
DIRECTIONS
Cream butter and sugar either with a mixer on medium. Add vanilla.
In a separate bowl, stir together the 2 cups of flour, cornstarch and salt to combine. Using a wooden spoon to mix, add to butter mixture a third at a time mixing after each addition and adding the lavender when you add the last of the flour. Dough will be crumbly.
Spread a teaspoon of flour on your work surface and turnout the dough. Work the dough into a ball. You don’t want to over handle to dough so work quickly. Once it holds a ball form, rub some flour onto a rolling pin and roll out the dough to a 1 inch thick disk. This will help it to chill faster and will make rolling out the dough afterwards easier. Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350˚ F.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or use a silicone baking mat.
Spread a teaspoon or so of flour onto a clean dry work surface. Roll dough to about 1/4” thick. Use a 3” round cookie cutter to cutout the cookies placing the cuts as close as possible so as to cut down on the amount of re-working the dough as possible. Place on line cookie sheet. Depending on the size of your cutter, you should be able to get 20 to 24 cookies.
Bake for 18 - 20 minutes. Cookies will still be white, but set (they won’t rise). Let cool on parchment to set up, about 10 minutes.