Lavender Cookies - Arusuvai Friendship Chain

As I have said in my previous post, I have made a lot of friends through this little space of mine. What just started as commenting on each others post went on to sending emails, exchanging phone numbers, visiting each other etc.. Now I proudly call a lot of them as my good friends for life time :)

One other interesting way to keep in touch and know more food bloggers was through what is called as "Arusuvai Friendship chain". The large gang of Indian food bloggers have formed this chain in which one would receive a secret ingredient from another :) Isn't that sounding super exciting!!!

Sayantani restarted the Arusuvai chain in November I guess and it has reached me now. Its quite a long time since I received my package from the super blogger Bombay Foodie. Simran was too sweet to send me a very rarely found ingredient in India - the Lavender. She also sent me a very touching letter and few tartlet molds as a gift :) Thanks you so much dear and hugs to you :)

Though I could identify the ingredient, I found it hard to get a perfect fool proof recipe to make. I really wanted it to come out perfectly since the ingredient was close to impossible to get additional or again just in case something goes wrong. :(

Extensive googling and suggestions from friends did help me to know more about the ingredient but somehow I managed to incorporate it in a totally different recipe. The cookies were so good and linzer cookies were so attractive to all. The flavor and smell of the lavender were so so so damn good :)

Lavender Cookies Recipe

Ingredients:

All purpose flour(Maida) - 1 1/2 cups (300 gms)
Powdered sugar - 1 cup (200 gms)
Unsalted Butter - 1/2 cup (100 gms)
Almond powder - 100 gms
Dried Lavender - 1 tblsp
Salt - a pinch
Milk - 2 tblsp

Method:

In a bowl mix the lavender petals with the sugar thoroughly. If you are powdering sugar, just drop in the lavender and pulse it along with the sugar.

Chop the butter into chunks and beat it with the sugar lavender mixture.

Now add the all purpose flour, salt and almond powder to it and mix well until everything comes together.

If you find the dough dry and crumbly, add 2 tsp of milk and mix well until it forms a soft dough.

Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for half an hour.

Flour the work surface and roll the dough into a 1/4 inch thick sheet. Use cutters of your choice to cut out shapes. Place the cut cookies on the lined baking tray.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place the tray with cookies in and bake for 12-15 minutes, watching closely so that they don’t get too brown. 12 minutes did is perfectly in my convection oven.

Enjoy the strong lavender aroma while baking :)

This quantity would make around 30 round shaped cookies.

Happy eating :)

To make Linzer cookies:

You will need one large cookie cutter and one small cutter of same shape and some jam.

Roll the dough and using a 2 to 3 inch cookie cutter (round, square, heart, etc.) cut out the dough. Place the cookies about 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheet. Use a smaller cookie cutter (1 inch) to cut out the centers of half of the cookies on the baking sheet.

You will be sandwiching two cookies together and there will be a small window in the top cookie so you can see the jam underneath.

Bake the cookies as said above.

Meanwhile take the jam(I used black current) in a sauce pan and heat in low flame until it becomes slightly thick.

To assemble - place the cookies with holes on a plate and dust some powdered sugar over it.

Apply 1/2 tsp of the jam on top the base cookies and sandwich it with the sugar coated cookies.

Tips:

The cookies are crisp and apt for tea time.

While making linzer cookies, its best to assemble them just on the day of serving so that it doesn't lose its crispness.

I'm happy to send this post as an entry to Food Palette purple event :)

Written by: Nithya
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