HERB - RECIPE: Lavender Cookies

[Gaylin Walli]

How about a food recipe for now? (I'm still trying to type in those
balm recipes and the sour tummy cordial recipe for everyone) I made
some of these last night. Yummy.

These were a big hit last year at Christmas. I've made them before for
folks and most people are suprised at how good they taste. It's not
something that most people are used to, though, so be prepared for
some "ugh!" reactions. Most people associate the smell/taste of
lavender with soap, not food. -- jasmine, jasmine at infoengine.com


JASMINE'S LAVENDER COOKIES

(makes about 2.5-3.0 dozen)

Equipment:

   mixing bowls
   measuring cups and spoons
   mixing spoons or a good electric mixer
   a small bowl (a soup bowl will work well)
   a small kitchen ruler
   a kitchen timer
   at least 2 ungreased cookie sheets
   cookie racks (wax paper on your countertop doesn't work as well)

Ingredients for the cookies:

    1 cup stick unsalted butter, softened but not melted
       (Do not use margarine, whipped butter, or butter substitute.)
    1/2 cup white sugar or lavender sugar
    1/4 teaspoon salt
    2 cups all-purpose flour
    Lavender sugar (for rolling the cookies in)

Ingredients for lavender sugar:

    1 cup dried lavender blossoms
    1 cup white sugar

   Mix these together in a small bowl. You'll need to keep
   mixing these together as you use them because the lavender
   has a tendency to separate from the sugar and float to the
   top of the mix. If you make enough of this ahead of time
   you can sift out some of the flowers and use the leftover
   sugar in the cookies themselves (I keep some of this around
   at all times).

Preparation instructions (see optional preparation below):
    Cream together the butter and the sugar until it is light
and fluffy, a pale golden yellow color. To this mixture, add
the salt and the flour gradually, but without beating excessively
between additions. After the final addition of flour, mix
until all ingredients are thoroughly combined, being sure to
scrape the sides and bottoms of the bowl. Chill this dough for
about 1 hour (sometimes a little less) until it is firm enough
to handle (not excessively sticky on your hands).
    Preheat your oven to 350F. Form the dough you chilled into
small balls, about 1-inch in diameter (measure them with a
kitchen ruler). Roll each ball in the lavender sugar and place
it on the ungreased cookie sheet. Press down the each ball with
your thumb, but don't press all the way through, just far enough
to flatten the cookie.
    Bake each sheet for roughly 12 to 15 minutes, until the
cookies are very lightly golden, not brown on the edges. Take
the cookies off the sheets as soon as they come out of the oven.
    Once cooled, store in an airtight tin or cookie jar.

Optional prepartion:
    Another way to prepare these cookies is to follow the
instructions for creaming everything together and chilling
the dough as instructed above. Try using the lavender sugar
that has the flowers filtered out in place of the plain
sugar in the cookies.
    Once everything is chilled well enough to handle, take a
long sheet of wide wax paper an place the dough at one end. Shape
the dough roughly as a  tube or rectangle and then use the wax
paper to roll the dough up into a log. Leave enough room on each
end of the log for a small amount of waxed paper to be twisted.
Close the ends of the log off from the air by twisting the extra
waxed paper in opposite directions (one clockwise, one counter-
clockwise).
    Place your dough log in the freezer for AT LEAST 3 hours.
You can freeze this log up to 6 months. When you're ready to
make your cookies, simply slice them off the log, place them
on the ungreased cookie sheet, sprinkle a little filtered lavender
sugar on top of them, and bake as indicated above.

Some preparation and baking hints:
    I've not gotten the hang of air-bake cookie sheets yet. I
find that when I use these non-stick sheets, I burn my cookies
because I keep thinking they aren't done. Keep in mind that the
lavender that sticks to the outside of the cookie should turn
brown, but that isn't an indicator of when the cookie is done.
    I've found that the first cookies I put in the oven cook
slower than the later cookies. Keep this in mind when you're
watching your cookies to see if they're done.
    While one sheet of cookies is baking, it's helpful to prepare
the second sheet to go immediately into the oven. This minimizes
the time the oven door is open and makes the baking go faster.
If you only use one cookie sheet, you should really wait for your
sheet to cool down some before you place the next batch of cookies
on it. Without doing so you not only run the risk of burning yourself,
but the cookies often are tougher and sometimes overbaked.
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