Lavender Heart Cookies

Hi everyone, thank you for all your lovely comments on my last post.  I thought I would do a recipe post and give you one of my most favourite and foolproof biscuit recipes.

Lavender Heart Cookies

The recipes is from a South African Magazine called Food and Home Entertaining, and I remember when I bought the magazine many years ago it was so expensive, but I just had to have the lavender biscuit recipe!

As I've always grown lavender it was a great way of using the beautiful blue flowers and the fragrance is divine!

My daughters also love the recipe as it's not as sweet as some biscuits, like chocolate chip...which incidentally they also love...

So here's the basic biscuit recipe and you just need to add a few fresh or dried lavender heads (2-3 teaspoons) which you've crumbled between your fingers or pulled off...I've used fresh and dried both successfully and I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't love the fragrance and the taste!

250g butter, softened

300g castor sugar

2 jumbo eggs, whole

2.5ml vanilla essence, or you can use 1 tsp vanilla paste, whichever you have to hand

500g plain flour

15ml baking powder

1ml salt

Preheat oven to 180C.  Line baking sheets with baking parchment.  No need to grease. The recipe says it makes 60-80 biscuits, I've never managed to make that many, but you'll probably get about 40...

Cream the butter and sugar until light and pale yellow in colour.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.  Add the vanilla essence/paste.

Before the next step is where I usually add the lavender...I probably add about 2-3 teaspoons but feel free to add more if you want a very intense flavour.

Sift together the dry ingredients and fold into the butter mixture carefully to form a soft dough that's firm enough to roll out.   Wrap the dough in clingwrap and allow the dough to rest for at least 30 minutes in the fridge (don't let it get too cold otherwise it's hard to roll out and cracks!)

Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of about 4mm.  Cut out heart shapes using your heart shaped cookie cutter.  Carefully lift the biscuits onto the baking tray leaving sufficient space between each one (they don't spread but a 1cm between is good)  Bake for about 12-15 minutes.  As soon as the biscuits come out of the oven, sprinkle with castor sugar and leave to cool.  Ovens do vary so I would say between 10-15 minutes until golden.

(how cool is instagram!)

They make a lovely homemade gift, especially when wrapped in a cellophane bag with a ribbon, or a pretty box...they look so pretty they're an absolute scene stealer on a tea tray!

Happy baking....

Sharon

xxx