I love butter cookies. I used to really love the butter cookies that came in the round, blue tin, but these are even better. These cookies are oomphed up with a subtle hit of lavender, and the texture is perfect too- they are wonderfully crisp with flaky insides. Crispy, flaky, buttery baked goods- seriously, I’m in heaven. Can someone come over and eat these for me?
To make these cookies, grind up 1/2 tablespoon of lavender and 1/2 tablespoon of raw sugar. A coffee or spice grinder would work much better than my food processor did. Also, I used evaporated cane sugar, which has fairly large granules, but regular sugar would be fine too.
Cut 1 stick of cold butter into cubes and add it into the food processor along with 1/4 cup of sugar. Run it until the butter looks whipped and is fully incorporated with the lavender and sugar. The original recipe said to use room-temperature butter, but once I feel like baking, I never feel like waiting for my butter to soften. I find that my food processor is the quickest way to bake with cold butter.
Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 1/8 teaspoon of salt, and 1 1/4 cup of flour to the food processor, and run it until the flour is fully incorporated and the mixture looks like damp sand.
Dump your cookie mixture into a large bowl. The mixture will be very crumbly, but try your best to squeeze it into a ball. If you’re having too much trouble, add 1 tablespoon of water to the mixture and work it in. Keep on squeezing and shaping until your dough stays in a ball. It will still be crackly. Cover the dough with plastic wrap, and let it chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. I’m not sure if this step is truly necessary, however, because the dough returns to room temperature pretty quickly later on.
Remove your dough from the fridge, and preheat your oven to 350ºF. Lightly flour a surface, and use a rolling pin to flatten half of the dough. You should roll it out to be about 1/8 of an inch thick. I like thin, crispy cookies, but you could go thicker if that’s what you prefer. The dough will still be pretty crumbly, but keep doing your best to push it back together and flatten it out. Use a glass or cookie cutter to cut out shapes. Re-roll the excess dough scraps and continue. Alternatively, you could use a knife to cut the rolled dough into rectangles (I liked eating the rectangles better. Why? No clue.).
Place your cookies on a baking sheet lined with a silicon baking mat or parchment paper. The cookies don’t rise much, so you can place them closely together. Whisk 1 egg with 1 teaspoon of water, and lightly brush it on the tops of the cookies so they turn golden brown when they bake. Prick the cookies with a fork to prevent them from getting too puffy. You may choose to sprinkle more sugar on top of the cookies to make them look pretty, but I thought it made the cookies too sweet.
Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes or until they start to brown around the edges. If your oven doesn’t cook evenly, rotate the cookie sheet half way through.
Here are my preferred rectangular cookies. These are SO delicious and snackable. When David came home and saw them, he asked why I was making crackers. Oy.
This recipe is adapted from Joy the Baker.
Shopping list:
- Lavender- 1/2 tablespoon
- Butter- 1 stick
- Raw sugar- 1/4 cup and 1/2 tablespoon
- Flour- 1 1/4 cup
- Salt- 1/8 teaspoon
- Vanilla extract- 1 teaspoon
- Egg- 1
