With striking deep purple stems, lavender is a heady flower grown in a lot of gardens. They are great for attracting the local bees and supporting honey production. Lavender is a beautiful addition to any garden border but it’s also productive, and once dried and preserved the flower heads can be used in your kitchen. This lavender and lemon shortbread biscuits recipe elevates the simple shortbread with notes of lavender as well as lemon. Two complimentary flavours which create a tasty teatime treat.
Drying lavender
Drying fresh lavender is a beautiful way to preserve its scent, color, and versatility — used here in our lavender and lemon shortbread biscuits. It has many culinary uses, as well as making sachets, or garden-to-table crafts.
The best time to harvest lavender is when it has an array of flowers that have just fully opened on the plant. Harvest around midday, to ensure the morning dew has evaporated which can lead to mould in the drying process. Cut just above the foliage using sharp scissors or secateurs and bundle them together with an elastic band.
Lavender is best dried hanging upside down in bunches for a couple of weeks in a dry, shady and well-ventilated space. Make sure to avoid direct sunlight to help preserve the colour. Once dried you can remove the flower buds from the stems and keep in a glass jar or airtight container, away from sunlight and heat.
The flower heads can remain stored like this for a number of years, however they start to lose their flavour and aroma after a couple of years.
Check out another of my related blog posts on Preserving Summer
Growing lavender
Lavender loves sunlight – around 6-8 hours daily. It also likes well-drained soil, and does not want to sit in the damp. The best time to plant is in April/May. You should space the plants around 30cm apart, and water regularly until established. Once matured, they are pretty drought-tolerant and don’t like to be over-watered. To ensure a healthy and beautiful display every year, cut back the plants to a third height to prevent woody growth – you have to be quite severe.
Varieties best suited to a UK climate or similar would be an English Lavender variety – such as ‘Hidcote’ or ‘Munstead’ – and ‘Provence’ is a particularly good choice if you do plan to dry the flowers and use in the kitchen.
Other sweet treats on the blog
Here is a list of some other sweet treat recipes you can find on my blog:
Stored in an airtight tin or Tupperware, these biscuits will be good for up to 5-7 days.
Lavender and Lemon Shortbread Biscuits
Equipment
- 1 Cooker cutter approximately 7cm/3"
- 1 Stand Mixer or Hand Mixer
Ingredients
- 120 g Coconut Oil
- 120 ml maple syrup
- ½ tsp Vanilla paste
- pinch of salt
- 280 g gluten-free flour or plain flour
- 1 lemon zested
- ½-1 tbsp Dried lavender flours
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 180 °C.
- Place the coconut oil, maple syrup, vanilla, and salt, in a stand mixer (or a bowl with a hand whisk) and mix until lighter in colour and well blended (about 2-3 minutes)
- With a wooden spoon, mix in the flour, lemon zest and lavender flowers so it comes together as a dough. Pop the dough in the fridge for 10-15 minutes as this helps to roll it out.
- Remove the dough from the fridge and place the dough in between 2 sheets of greaseproof paper and roll out gently until approximately 1/2cm/2/8" thick.
- Cut out using your preferred shape – note that this is a relatively soft dough so the simpler the better. For example I usually use a plain round cutter approximately 7cm/3" wide.
- Place the cut-out shortbreads on baking trays lined with parchment paper.
- Bake in the pre-heated oven for approximately 10-12 minutes until turning slightly golden (but don’t allow to colour too much).
- Leave to rest for 5 mins on the trays before transferring to a wire rack to totally cool.
- These biscuits will keep in a closed tin for approximately 5 days.
