I got a little experimental at PAX Aus this year - this was my first time as part of the Cookie Brigade and the feedback I got from several cookie consumers was that they seemed to have turned out well. One of the ones I was a little surprised was popular were my lavender variations. I used my standard chocolate chip cookie recipe and just modified it to below:
Ingredients:
500g butter
10-15g or approx 1/4-1/3 cup (loose packed) of dried lavender flowers
2 cups white sugar
2 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
2 - 3 tsp raspberry syrup (a very concentrated essence basically)
4 egg
7 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup Dutch cocoa
2 tsp salt
Gently melt butter with lavender in mixing bowl in microwave. If you’re worried about burning the lavender, melt the butter first and then put the flowers in to sit for about 10 minutes.
Cream the butter mix and the sugars, vanilla and raspberry essences. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in combined flour, salt and cocoa gradually. If you’re finding it starting to get a bit dry, add up to 1/2 - 1 cup of water gradually as required. The mix should be malleable but not dry.
Scoop out even amounts and roll out into balls. Flatten into biscuit circles. *
Put cookies onto trays but leave an inch or so between them as they do spread. Bake in moderate over for 10-12 minutes depending on size of biscuits - they should still give a tiny bit if you touch the top as you don’t want them to dry out too much. I suggest cooking on baking paper and leaving them on the paper for a few minutes to harden before moving them to cooling racks.
Once out of the oven I would also suggest giving them an icing as the lavender can be quite a strong flavour. I used a mix of icing sugar and lemon juice mixed to a fairly solid consistency which helped to even out the flavours. This recipe, using a 31mm ice-cream scoop, made 65 10cm/4 inch round cookies.
For variations on this I’d suggest throwing in some mini chocolate chips, or some dried berries into the dough.
*At this point you can freeze the dough. I put them in cling-wrap (or Saran-wrap for the USA-icans!) with them separated from each other and then just made sure to remove as much air as possible before putting them in the freezer. They can be cooked straight from the freezer.
**EDIT: 23/7 -This is 4 times my normal recipe - you can always just quarter it to get a more reasonable amount!**
