American Dessert
LAVENDER COOKIES
INGREDIENTS
1 cup butter
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon dried lavender (lavender buds)
2 cups flour (a bit more later for dusting surfaces)
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons water
PREPARATION
Use fork to cream butter and sugar in mixing bowl. (It’s easier if your butter is already soft from being outside the refrigerator.) Add flour, lavender, flour, vanilla extract, and water. Mix with fork until thoroughly blended. Roll mixture into large dough ball. Cover with plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Dust plate with flour. Put dough on plate and roll it out. Cut out cookies with knife, cookie cutter, or small cup. Dust cookie sheet with flour. Place cookies on cookie sheet and put in oven. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes or until they just begin to brown.
Remove sheet from oven. Let cookies cool for 10 minutes. Remove from cookie sheet and place on wire rack. Let cool for another 10 minutes.
Cookie fiends will find waiting these 20 minutes difficult.
TIDBITS
1) Lavender has a long history of supposedly beneficial uses.
2) According to Chicago’s Smell and Taste Research Foundation, the most sexually exciting smells for men are lavender and pumpkin pie.
3) Having a man over lemon and lavender chicken and a pumpkin pie for dessert really loads the odds in your favor.
4) Unless, of course, your man has a migraine.
5) Good news, the German nun Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) believed drinks mixed with lavender cured migraines.
6) So why serve you headachy hunk a nice cooling drink of lavender lemonade? The lavender makes his head feel better. The lavender also makes him amorous. Can ViagraTM do as much? I think not.
7) Lavender was once claimed to cure impotence in mice. Why test it on mice? Why? Why? Do we need more mice?
8) But if lavender could cure impotence in men caused by evil spirits, it would be a great thing. Cheaper than ViagraTM. The pharmaceutical industry must be afraid of lavender.
9) And hah, Spanish churches used to burn lavender to keep away evil spirits.
10) Let’s recap. Lavender chases away evil spirits that cause male impotency, cures impotency, banishes headaches, puts a man in a loving mood, makes a great entree, and is the just the thing for a nice cooling drink.
11) And if you don’t have a date lavender will: protect you from the plague, alleviate muscular pains, diminish cold sores, soothe insect bites, banish head lice, mask halitosis, and control dandruff.
12) Yay lavender.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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