Lavender Shortbread Rounds

This recipe made approximately 32 shortbread rounds, I think... I'm not sure how many I ate before I counted them.

This recipe has been modified from the family baking book, however, the tips are entirely of my own devising.
There were some tears and some despair followed by joyous epiphanies. I don't usually break down and cry over a recipe gone awry, but this was for Tej's birthday party and I so wanted to do everything right.

I share with you all my wisdom and then some. Have fun!

Ingredients:

All Purpose Flour (white flour/maida) - 2 1/4 cups
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Unsalted butter, softened - 2 sticks or 16 tbsp
Confectioners' sugar - 1/2 cup
Granulated sugar - 1 tablespoon + more for sprinkling
Dried lavender flowers - 1 tsp (for a stronger lavender flavor, use 2 tsp)

Preheat your over to 300 degrees F.

Process the lavender flowers along with a tablespoon of sugar in a clean coffee grinder or food processor until you get a 'mostly fine powder blend'. This lavender-sugar will look a little blue-grey in color (picture on top) compared to the confectioners sugar (below).

Sift the lavender-sugar, salt and flour together and set it aside.

Cream the butter and confectioners' sugar together until light and fluffy. This took 6 minutes in my kitchen with a handheld electric mixer. 

Add the flour mixture to the butter-sugar mix until combined. Turn the mixture out on to a lightly floured surface and mix till it comes together in a ball.

Portion into little balls and flatten to make small discs about an inch or inch and a half in diameter and just about, less than half an inch in thickness. Lay them out on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and poke holes using the tines of a fork.

Sprinkle the cookies with granulated sugar.

Space the shortbread rounds leaving at least an inch of space all around.
Bake for around 40 minutes. When ready, the biscuits will still be white.
Cool on a wire rack.

Troubleshooting:

Dough too dry - add cold water one tablespoon at a time into the flour mixture until it comes together.

Dough too sticky - Wait a few minutes, leaving the dough uncovered and try again. Check the dough every 2-3 minutes.

Dough too wet - allow it to stand at room temperature for a few minutes, it usually becomes more dry as time passes. If not, add flour one teaspoon or even lesser at a time and try kneading it again.

You absolutely need to:

- Use confectioners' sugar, do not substitute with granular sugar. If you don't have any confectioners' sugar, grind granulated sugar and corn starch together in a food processor/ grinder till you get a fine powder blend of the two. The ratio I have had success with is 1 cup of granular sugar and 1 1/4 tablespoons of corn starch or arrowroot powder.

- Set your oven at low temperature

Storage:

Shortbread keeps for a long time, we've had a batch of cookies that kept for a week in an airtight container with no changed in flavor. They might have kept for longer without going bad, but we finished them in a week.

Bread Pudding, the way it's Meant to Be

When I was a little girl, my mother's Parsee friends used to make me bread pudding. Their recipe was simple and the end result, delicious.

Back then, white bread wasn't evil, eggs weren't akin cigarettes (bs, imo), sugar was sweet and people would eat, all of the above, albeit in moderation.

I must admit I tried, many a time to make recipes healthier. Swapping butter for yogurt, applesauce, good will, and so forth... and I've actually succeeded many times. So I do have a perfectly nice recipe for bread pudding which uses whole grain bread and natural sweeteners, but you know what, it just doesn't satisfy.

Truth be told, I love white bread. I love eggs. I love sugar. In moderation, I believe they can do no harm. Besides, our diet is otherwise rich in whole grains, vegetables, and legumes for me to not feel guilty about this indulgence.
Most importantly though, this bread pudding, like other favourites from my childhood, shall not be messed with.

You will need:
Sliced white bread (or Indian Pav Bread) sliced into small pieces - 5 cups  
Large Eggs - 6
Milk (whole or 2%) - 2 cups
Condensed milk - 1 can (14 oz, or approx 400ml)
Sultanas/ Golden Raisins - 1/2 cup
Vanilla extract - 2 teaspoons
Green Cardamom, shelled and powdered - 6 pods
Nutmeg, freshly grated - a pinch

Just be sure to:
1. Use unsweetened white bread like the kind they use to make sandwiches. Do not use sweet bread, this recipe is sweet enough as it is.
2. If you aren't familiar with or fond of the flavor cardamom imparts, then I would strongly suggest using fewer pods. As for me, I grew up in a house that on Thursdays and weekends was a cardamom scented haven, so I love the stuff.
3. You have to grate the nutmeg fresh. Pre-powdered nutmeg is just wrong. Just as wrong as pre-powdered cardamom.

A Note on the Sweetness:
This dessert is sweet. Quelle surprise!!
Well, what I mean is, if you've tried other recipes on this blog you will have realized that they are sweet enough to be called sweet, but not cloying sweet. Not sickeningly sweet. Not Italian sweet.
It is sweet though, so if you hold me in high regard and cherish me for my ability to make desserts sweet, but not too sweet, be warned that this is one of the sweeter ones. It's delicious though, so I would urge you not to make any subtractions or worse, substitutions.

If you absolutely, have to tone down the sweetness because a Tufted Capuchun is holding your favorite sweater hostage or something like that, you can do one of the following:
1. Use 1/4 cup of sultanas or (I can't believe I'm saying this) leave them out altogether.  This is what I would consider a great tragedy, but you must do what you must do for your favorite sweater.
2.  Use half a can of condensed milk and replace it with plain milk.


The How:
Begin by boiling the milk and condensed milk in a sauce pan. I usually bring this to a boil and then let it cool, but you can get by with just bring it to a point where the two are well combined and steaming. Let it sit around till it is barely warm to touch.

Grease your baking dish. Slice the bread. Toss together with sultanas and add them to the baking dish. Cover the lot with some aluminum foil (you will need this while baking and also to keep the bread from drying out in the interim).

Get your blender and add the six eggs, vanilla essence, shelled and powdered cardamom, and grate nutmeg right into the jar. Blend till well combined.

Add as much of the cooled milk as the blender jar permits. Most blender jars don't have the capacity for all the milk + eggs, so be sure to add the blended mix back into the rest of the milk and give it all a good stir.

Pour the milk/egg mixture over the bread and let it sit for about half an hour.



Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Set a pan (larger than your baking dish) in the oven, place the pudding dish in it and add water to the pan.
Cook for 50 minutes.


Remove the aluminum foil and cook for an additional 30 minutes. Oven temperatures vary, so it might take 10 minutes more or less.
Look for a firm pudding that doesn't jiggle on the pan being shaken slightly. Be careful not to spill any of the hot water on yourself.

By the way, if any of you did find your way to that article in Time, chances are what caused those people to contract heart disease might be that sliver of bacon coupled alongside them harmless, healthy, balls of sunshine.