My Little Eden: Lavender Shortbread

So ever since I read my first issue of Good Magazine

I've been wanting to make the lavender shortbread that was a featured recipe in that issue.

As you may have seen in this post, I recently bought a beautiful lavender plant

so I thought I would try out the recipe

So here it is . .

Lavender Shortbread

Ingredients

250g Butter (softened but not melted)

4 heaped tablespoons of Icing Sugar

2 tablespoons of finely chopped Fresh Lavender Flowers

2 cups of Flour

A pinch of Salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius

Using a cake mixer (or electric beater), beat sugar and butter until pale and creamy.

Mix in lavender, flour and salt.

(I used a wooden spoon at this point instead of the cake mixer, but it's up to you.)

Tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and lightly knead to shape the dough into a ball.

Cover and chill in the fridge for at least an hour, until firm. (I wrapped the dough in cling wrap)

While you're waiting for the dough to cool,

Prepare baking trays by lining with baking paper.

I like to lightly spray the tray with oil first so the baking paper will stick to the tray and won't slide around

Once chilled, uncover and place onto a lightly floured surface.

Using a rolling pin, roll dough to about 6mm thick.

Using a cookie cutter of your choice, cut out your shapes.

Each time clumping the excess dough into a ball, re-rolling and cutting out until all the dough is used.

Place the cookies onto your prepared baking trays and put into the fridge for 15 minutes before baking.

Remove from the fridge and place into the oven .

Bake for 15 minutes. About 10 minutes in swap trays around.

You want the shortbread to change slightly in colour but not be golden.

Cool on a rack to set before eating.

Here are some (actually a lot) of photos of the process :)

250g butter

4 heaped Tbsp Icing Sugar

Beat until pale and creamy

Remove the stems from the lavender flowers

2 Tbsp of finely chopped Fresh Lavender Flowers

Add to the butter mixture

2 cups of Flour

I always sift my Flour

A pinch of Salt

Mix the Lavender, Flour and Salt into the Butter mixture

A lightly floured surface

Knead into a ball

Wrap in cling wrap

Line your baking trays with baking paper

Lightly spray the tray before lining with baking paper to help the paper to stick to the tray

Now, the recipe in Good Magazine said to roll the dough into logs and then slice of your cookies into 6mm rounds. But I found that my dough was too crumbly so I decided to roll the dough out flat and use a cookie cutter. It's up to you what you choose, if your dough is moist enough you may be able to slice your cookies off a log of dough.

Since I had a bit of trouble getting my cookies into the desired shape,

I didn't get any photos of my rolled out dough.