The other day I walked out to my lavender field. We had a spell of unseasonably warm weather, so most of my 300+ culinary lavender plants are going to be ready for harvest about two weeks early. What's interesting about this fact is that I have a bunch of last year's crop still hanging about the house. Hmm...
I have been on a mission to develop tasty lavender food recipes for years. Lavender in food can go two directions: a palate joy inducing euphoric experience or a reminiscent of grandma sticking a bar of soap in your mouth for creative language usage horror. One of those options is more enjoyable than the other.
With thoughts of saponified potassium hydroxide in mind, I developed a strategy for making something yummy that also contained lavender, a lavender lemon shortbread cookie.
There are multiple ways to infuse lavender flavor into food, but for the shortbread experiment I used my spice grinder and ground the lavender finely. I then put a couple of the tablespoons of sugar from the total required sugar in my recipe in with the lavender and ground it all together. I then creamed the lavender sugar with the butter and proceeded to make cookie legend.
Seriously my friends, I am not exaggerating. The resulting shortbread cookies were beyond not disgusting. Crisp buttery shortbread infused with a hint of lemon and lavender. My family won't quit eating them, and they might have exhibited something akin to despair when I packed up half of them and gave them to my neighbor to try. She also exuded enthusiasm regarding the excellence of the cookies' taste. Empirically speaking, positive waves are emanating from yours truly.
So, to recap, if you happen to find yourself with some culinary lavender, a topic which I will write about more in future posts, do yourself a favor and grind it in with some sugar and make a baked good of some sort. You won't be disappointed. Just remember, with lavender a little goes a long way, so start small when it comes to the amount you use, for like a Skywalker, the force is strong in lavender.
And as almost always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's fragrant and currently resplendent iPhone.
