Alana
It’s been pretty rainy in Edmonton lately. Before I started my dialysis training, I was spending a lot of my time knitting and hanging out at the Tea Girl. I want to start practicing my pastry school recipes more often, but wasn’t really in the mood to do anything that requires brain power, as my Tea Girl time was often spent reviewing renal function. I started flipping through The Cookiepedia, and when I saw the recipe for shortbread with a lavender lemon variation I knew what I had to do!
I have a whipped shortbread recipe that I used to love, but the last few times I used it have resulted in disappointment. I had high hopes that this recipe would be a new favourite.
Pro-Tip: Don’t
These were good, but I think that I can do better. Firstly, I would probably add more lavender or figure out a way to bring out the flavour more, as well as bump up the vanilla to a full teaspoon. I also found that the cookies didn’t hold their shapes as well as they could have; I would be curious to add a little bit more flour and see what that does. Regardless, I definitely want to play around with this recipe.
Lavender Shortbread Cookies
Adapted from The Cookiepedia
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cup (190 g) All purpose flour
- ¼ cup (35 g) Rice flour – if you don’t have rice flour use an additional ¼ cup all purpose flour (30 g)
- 1 cup (225 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- ½ cup (110 g) granulated sugar
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¾ tsp vanilla
Directions
- In a small bowl whisk together the all purpose and rice flours, and set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer (or medium-large bowl) whip the butter, granulated sugar, salt, vanilla and lavender until light and fluffy.
- Add the flour to the butter mixture and mix together by hand using a wooden spoon until completely incorporated.
- Scrape the dough onto a clean counter top, and form into a ball using your hands. The quicker you are, the less messy your hands will be! Squish the ball so it’s 1-2 inches thick and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 2 hours or more.
- Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F, and prepare your cookie sheets with parchment paper, or by greasing the sheets.
- Sprinkle flour over your work surface and rolling pin, then roll out the dough until it is about ¼ inch thick*. Rotate and add flour as needed. Use cookie cutters, pizza cutter, or knife to shape your cookies.
- Bake for 15-17 minutes, or until golden around the edges of the cookies.
* Personally I think that these would be good thicker
Official recipe reference:
Adimando, S. (2011). Shortbread. In The Cookiepedia. (pp 35-37) Philadelphia, PA: Quirk Books.
Chateau Gateau 