Recipe – Lavender Heart Cookies

Lavender, its bushy hedges wafting a exquisite scent in the wintertime sunshine, is one of my favorite herbs. It is hardy, smells wonderful, cleanses the air of viruses & repels insects. All these virtues & you may bake with it too! I was going through my recipe books yesterday, appearing for anything new to attempt in the cookie baking course & watched a recipe for Lavender Heart Cookies. Every time Id glanced through the script it had all of the time intrigued me, but I’d never attempted it before, as the conveived of utilising lilac in baking seemed a tiny bizarre…interesting but likely becoming results of ‘yuk Mum, what are these bits?’

Anyway, in the spirit of culinary adventure, I conveived I’d have a go. The components were minimal – butter, sugar, flour & flowers! Lavender florets. So off I went to selection the lavender. Not practically was required, just 2 tablespoons of fresh florets (the tiny violet bloom bits off the primary stalk), so I had a nice therapeutic moment selecting the best stalks from my lilac hedge, which is still developing new flowers in spite of it being the center of wintertime here. Then came the mixing all the components conjointly into a crumbly dough, which is more crumb than dough, but eventually did all labor together. After its remain in the fridge, I tentatively rolled out the dough, still crumbling madly, but it was eventually persuaded to stay conjointly by an insistent rolling pin. I churlishly refused my youngest daughters offers of aid in slicing out the hearts…mean of me, I know, but this was my journey of exploration not hers, this time!

They came out of the oven, fragrant & golden. The moment of reckoning drew near. Children, scenting new baking, gathered around. The misses uncritically inserted in, my son, the conservative connoisseur, became away, but altered his brain at the appreciative noises around him. A cautious nibble & he was convinced I was not attempting to poison them…!

Here’s the recipe in subject you’d like a culinary trip too!

Lavender Heart Cookies
115g/4oz butter
90ml/6 tablespoons caster sugar
175g/6oz banal flour
2 tablespoons fresh lilac florets

Cream conjointly the butter & 60ml/4 tablespoons of the sugar until airy & fluffy. Stir in the flour & lilac & labor it in, kneading with your hands until it comes conjointly into a cushy ball of dough. Cover with cling film & chill in the fridge for fifteen minutes. Roll out on a softly floured surface. Stamp out the cookies with a heart shaped cutlery (alternatively a fluted-edged round cutter). Makes about eighteen with a 5cm/2inch cutter. Put cautiously onto a softly greased baking tray & sprinkle the remaining sugar onto the top of every shape. Bake at 200C/400F for about ten minutes until golden. Leave the cookies on the tray for 5 minutes, earlier placing on to a chiling rack.

So my experimentation was deemed a success. The adults, later that evening, as well liked them. ”Elizabethan” advisable my sister-in-law, & “packaged in a beautiful package they had make a fine gift”. I have to allow here that, granted the option of a cocoa cookie or a lilac one, the children would unanimously vote for chocolate, but the truth that they believed them edible at all, when they recognized they had flowers in, is beautiful high flatter for this recipe. I was the one who surreptitiously finished them off the next morning with my tea. That fragrant flavour on the palate, tidy thus far sweet, was irresistible!

Copyright 2006 Kit Heathcock