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lavender

Buttery Lavender Shortbread

December 26, 2010

Buttery Lavender Shortbread

December has got to be the best month for a food blogger, with the season being perfect for rich breads, lots of cookies and elaborate meals. And that makes me feel really bad because I haven’t done justice to the month.

While the weather in Bombay has been nothing but charming, and perfectly conducive for indulging in all sorts of winter-y pleasures (I even had to shut the windows one night!), I haven’t quite got the chance to sit back and enjoy the season and join in the merriment. With the bake sale, assignment deadlines and some very fun things in the works, baking new things took a back seat. A pity, I know.

My recipe file with ideas for blog posts to share with you is bursting at the seams, and I cannot wait to share all those things with you. Today, I’m sharing with you the recipe of the lavender shortbread I made for the bake sale. While the recipe is based on the lavender shortbread I made a long time ago, I tweaked it just a bit to showcase the buttery-ness of the cookie, as well as added a tad more lavender (yes, because it’s Christmas!). It’s my current favoruite snack and I’ve made it twice since the bake sale already because it’s not overtly sweet and I have tonnes of lavender in my pantry.

Buttery Lavender Shortbread

Buttery Lavender Shortbread
Yeild: 24 cookies

Note: It’s imperative that you rub the sugar and lavender together for the fragrance of the lavender to shine through. Also, if you’re using unsalted butter, I’d encourage you to add ½ tsp of salt  (stir it in with the flour)– it gives it such a well rounded flavour.

100g vanilla sugar (ground till fine)
2 tsp lavender
200g butter
300g flour
More butter for brushing the top of the cookie

Equipment: A rectangular tart pan (12 x 8 inches)

  1. Preheat oven to 325F/170C.
  2. Rub the vanilla sugar with the lavender until it’s fragrant. To give it a citrus-y flavour you could even add in some lime zest at this point.
  3. In a bowl mix the butter and sugar until light and slightly fluffy.
  4. Fold in the flour until evenly mixed.
  5. Transfer to the tart pan and press the dough down to an even layer.
  6. Brush the top with melted butter.
  7. With a knife, cut the dough into 24 pieces, and then pierce the pieces with a fork (so the cookie doesn’t fluff up).
  8. Bake for 25 minutes or until slightly golden.
  9. Cut pieces when it’s still warm along the lines that were made earlier.
  10. Transfer to a rack to cool. Eat up.

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Lavender Shortbread and Some Changes…

December 16, 2008

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Before I got my hands on some very fragrant lavender that Heather sent me, I’d keep coming across a bunch of recipes that I thought would be perfect if only I had some lavender. I must have been longing for lavender so much that I found it in my blogging by mail package. Now I was faced with a new problem – I’ve only 10g of lavender, so I must make something absolutely worthwhile!

With the cookie craze that has enveloped the blogosphere, I pulled out my cookie book and stumble upon a lovely French shortbread recipe. I changed a couple of things and ended up with a flaky, crunchy shortbread – served it with fresh strawberries for a delicious late afternoon snack.

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Lavender Shortbread
Yield: 16
Adapted from: The Little Big Cookies Book

1 cup / 150g flour
2tbsp cornstarch
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp lavender (I used dried)
¼ cup / 50g sugar
½ cup / 125g butter
½ tsp vanilla extract

  1. Preheat oven to 325F/170C and lightly grease a 9 inch springform pan.
  2. Sift together the flour, cornstarch, sugar and salt and stir in the lavender.
  3. Toss in cubes of chilled butter and blend together until they look like crumbs. (I made it this way as opposed to creaming butter and sugar together).
  4. Place the crumbs into the pan and press down with the hands or a potato masher.
  5. Now is when you can shape the edges with a pattern of your choice and pierce the dough uniformly to prevent it rising when it’s baking.
  6. With a knife, make 16 wedges, so that it’ll be easier to have 16 distinct pieces after it’s done baking.
  7. Bake for 25 minutes or until slightly golden.
  8. Cut pieces when it’s still warm along the lines that were made earlier.
  9. Transfer to a rack to cool.

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Next time around, I’d probably bake it for 5-7 minutes less than the prescribed 25 minutes to have softer shortbread. And then drizzle it with white chocolate.

jeader

On another note, and something I’m very excited about, today is when I’m changing quite a bit about my blog – making it more in line with my personality and trying to have a unified identity across the blogosphere. From Ambrosia, the blog will now be The Purple Foodie – purple as you already know is my favourite colour. And more importantly because now I’ve got my own domain name for this blog- purplefoodie.com! I was going back and forth with changing the identity since the blog has been titled Ambrosia for over a year – but I was really itching for a more personal identity and my own domain name (okay, you probably can’t see it now but that’s because my buddy who helped with the DNS business has set a round about forward as blogspot was giving me some errors, but when you enter purplefoodie.com you land up here! ) :D – I know I sound quite juvenile, but I’m really excited!

You can keep your links and feeds if you like since this blog can still be accessible at the old address of purplefoods.blogspot.com with the same content on it, though I would suggest that you folks resubscribe and update your bookmarks.

Oh and what a pleasant coincidence – The first day of The Purple Foodie starts with Lavender shortbread!

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This shortbread is off to Susan at Food Blogga for her Eat Christmas Cookies Event. You could hop over to view what the others have been baking.

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