Cooking With Lavender

Ingredients:

1C + 1 1/2 T. all purpose flour
1/3 C lavender sugar*
4 T. butter
2 1/2 T. sweet white wine
12 leaves lavender, finely chopped
pinch salt

Instructions:

Sift the flour, all but 1 T. of the sugar and the salt into a bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Make a well in the center and add the wine and lavender leaves, and stir gently. Leave the mixture for 10 minutes, stirring now and again, by which time it will have bonded together. Then gather together to make a soft dough.

Roll out the dough on a floured board to about 1/8 inch thick and use a serrated pasta wheel to cut out small strips, about 2 inches x 1 inch. Place on a buttered baking tray, giving one half of each strip a twist as you to so to make the cookies look like little bows.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 6-8 minutes or until the edges are just turning brown. Cool on a wire rack and sprinkle with the remaining sugar.

*Lavender Sugar

Mix 2 T. of spikes of fresh lavender flowers or 1 T. of dried lavender flowers with 1 C of superfine sugar. Select a glass jar and make alternate layers of sugar and lavender florets until the jar is full. Cover tightly and leave in a warm, dry room 1 to 2 weeks. Shake the jar through a sieve before using sugar. This method is similar to the conventional method used to make vanilla sugar.