

THREE IMPORTANT LAVENDER REMINDERS
• If you use lavender in cooking, use a variety of Lavandula angustifolia like ‘Hidcote’ or ‘Munstead’, sometimes called English lavender. Other lavenders have a higher camphor aroma and taste which will not enhance your cooking. (see my post of 6/16/09 for ‘Hidcote’ on my roof.)
•When your lavender finishes its bloom, cut off spent stems down to the first cluster of leaves to encourage re-bloom later in the season.
My parting gift to our hosts was a couple of hours of weeding in their daylily patch, as much a gift to me as to Gary & Diane.
Even if you don't grow your own Lavandula angustifolia, you can buy a pack of culinary lavender buds to make these and other treats.
LAVENDER MADELEINES (from: Lavender: How to Grow & Use the Fragrant Herb by Ellen Spector Platt, 2nd. Ed. Stackpole Books, 2009)
Ingredients
2 large eggs
a pinch of salt
½ cup granulated sugar
1 large lemon
1 cup all purpose flour
1 stick unsalted butter melted
1 tablespoon dried, or two tablespoons fresh lavender buds
1/3 cup confectioners sugar
Butter and flour the Madeleine mold.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Melt the butter, add the lavender and set aside to cool.
Finely grate the lemon, yellow part only.
In a medium bowl, wisk the eggs and salt until frothy.
Add the sugar gradually, wisking as you go.
Add the lemon rind.
With a rubber spatula or wooden spoon fold in the flour.
Mix in the melted butter with lavender.
Fill shells 2/3 full with batter.
Bake on middle rack for 12 to fifteen minutes until firm and brown around the edges.
Turn out immediately on a cooling rack, then sprinkle with confectioners sugar.
Makes 24 cakes. When reusing the mold for the second dozen, butter and flour again.
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