“You haven’t baked cookies in a very long time now, son”, my papa told me last time I went home with a cake in my hands. Obviously, my parent love, to their heart’s content, whatever I bake or cook for them. I haven’t heard a bad review about anything I have baked for them till date. It has always been of great taste and ultimate experience for them, even if they aren’t totally into it. How sweet it is! Isn’t it? And I love them for this. Though on the hindsight, I get critical of my work all the times. And he’s equally interested in looking at the photos as well. Although, he doesn’t carry a smartphone, neither he is a tech savvy, but he ensures that I show him the images. He just loves to see those food pics and even more enjoys identifying those props which he helps me in sourcing whenever I go see him. He’s always there ready to go with me on the prop hunt, for the search of silliest of articles and the weirdest of surfaces. All these faux surfaces you see here on my blog, he is the reason behind them all. We’ve gone to the junk dealers and the wood yards together always in search of some surface and he’s always happily answered those strange looks – “why the hell anyone would want to buy that stuff” saying that my son needs them for his photography work. He’s that adorable you see. And I am the luckiest person on this earth to have him as my papa. I think parent are like that only. The least I can do is to treat him more with my cakes and bakes and extend my love with creating some more food images and have fun with him every time. Shortbread cookies are the simplest of cookies which one can bake with experimenting to whatever extent. They are like clean slate and you have total freedom to draw your imagination in terms of flavor combination on them. And they are always so forgiving that they’ll never fail you. I got a big bag of edible lavender from my dear friend who was visiting home from US. So now you see, how even more lucky I am. The house was already smelling amazing from the fragrant edible lavender and I wanted to bake something really quick. And there happened these lovely gorgeous summery lavender lemon shortbread cookies, glazed with tangy lemon icing. At first bite, they tasted like rosemary shortbread cookies I had baked previously, but after a couple of bites, the flavors just tricked me in and it tasted so refreshing and summery. I am hopeful to make few more recipes with these lovely fragrant flowers.
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup superfine sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp dried lavender, plus extra for topping
- 1/2 cup icing sugar
- 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
- Cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy. Stir in the flour, sugar, salt and lavender and mix thoroughly.
- Roll the dough into two equal halves, shaping them in a ball. Flatten each round into a disc and wrap in a cling wrap and let them set in fridge for half an hour.
- Preheat the oven to 160 degree C and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Taking one disc of dough at a time, roll it on a lightly floured surface to thickness of 1/4 inch. Cut out the cookies using a round cookie cutter and place 1inch apart on the prepared baking sheet.
- Bake for 20 minutes; let cool completely on wire rack.
- Make the glaze by whisking the icing sugar and lemon juice together. Spoon about 1 teaspoon of the glaze over each cookie, spreading to cover the whole surface. Sprinkle with some more lavender. Let set for 30 minutes to 1 hour before serving.
