Apricot Lavender Cake

At the blueberry farm we bought some apricots in addition to the blueberries. I had seen this recipe on a fellow food blogger's Instagram and wanted to make it right away. Lavender forever. I didn't have a springform pan, so I split the cake into 2 pans. The recipe is from Plenty More via The Baking Bird. I've been cooking my way through Plenty (the original book) now that it's summer and all the vegetables are in season. Our tomatoes are just ripening now. 

• ¾ cup plus 1 Tablespoon unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 Tablespoons coconut oil
• 1 cup plus 1½ Tablespoons white sugar
• 1¼ cups almond flour
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1 cup pecans
• ¾ cup all-purpose flour
• 1/8 tsp sea salt 
• ½ teaspoon almond extract
• grated zest of 1 lemon
• 1½ teaspoons dried lavender buds
• 11 ripe apricots, halved and pitted
• Turbinado sugar 
• 
  
• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease 2 8 inch pans.
• Process the pecans and lavender in a food processor until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. In a large mixing bowls, combine The butter, oil, sugar, and almond flour until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, whisking after each addition to incorporate fully. continuing to beat until well incorporated. Fold in pecans, lavender, flour, vanilla, lemon zest, and teaspoon salt.
• Fill pans with cake batter and arrange apricot halves cut side up. Push down slightly so they are securely in place in the cake. Sprinkle with turbinado sugar.
• Bake for 40 minutes until golden brown. 
• I served each slice with a dollop of mascarpone and a drizzle of honey.

Lavender Peaches with Mascarpone and Amaretti

Peaches with Lavender Sugar and Amaretti Cookies

It's peach season! I've been making these for years but originally I saw the recipe while watching Giada on the Food Network. This recipe includes gram measurements for the cookies. Love and Olive Oil has a recipe that uses cup measurements. I was just really excited to use my scale.

I also made powdered sugar for this recipe in my Vitamix. It was pretty exciting! (I inhaled a lot of sugar granules in the process)

Amaretti Cookies 

• 3 large egg whites 
• 280g/9.9oz almond meal
• 280g/9.9oz white sugar
• 3/4 tsp natural almond extract (the artificial kind is too strong)
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 
  
• For rolling:
• 2 heaped tbsp. white sugar
• 2 heaped tbsp. powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Fill 2 separate bowls with the different sugars.

In a large mixing bowl and using a mixer, whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks. If you lift your beaters out of the egg mixture, the peaks that form should not fall over.

Fold in the rest of the ingredients with a spatula. The dough will be sticky.

Scoop tablespoonfuls of dough and roll them in the white sugar first followed by the powdered sugar. The method helps all the powdered sugar not dissolve in the dough. It actually worked! 

Place cookies 1 inch apart on cookie sheets. Bake for 15 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Let cool on cookie sheets.

The site said they're good for 3-4 days, so I froze about half of mine for later.

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I usually serve 1 peach/person, so I'll just do a general guideline.

Ingredients:

Firm, ripe peaches

White wine

Mascarpone cheese, at room temperature 

1/4 cup white sugar

1/2 tsp dried lavender buds 

Blend the lavender with the sugar or grind in a mortar and pestle. Halve the peaches neatly and take out the pit using a little knife. Sprinkle peach halves with the lavender sugar. 

Heat a cast iron pan on medium heat until pretty hot. Spray with coconut oil. Lay peaches cut side down for about 5 minutes without moving them. You want them to be a nice brown color on the edges. Alternatively grilling them would be amazing. Flip over the peaches with a spatula and cook for another 2 minutes. Add a splash of white wine and let cook down for another minute. Now you have a delicious syrup to serve with the peaches.

Serve the peaches with their natural syrup, a sprinkle of extra lavender sugar, a tablespoonful of mascarpone for each peach half, and one crumbled cookie for each peach half. Done. Easiest summer dessert.

Lavender Coffee Cake

This a a recipe I haven't made in years. Just this weekend my friend Kate came to visit in Philly which meant brunch!! This cake is great because it can be made the night before. It's really moist and the crumb topping is fantastic. There's just enough lavender flavor so the cake is not overpowered. I bet substituting 2 tablespoons of fresh herbs would work too (Rosemary, perhaps?). I know Laura would like that! 

Recipe from The Joys of Lavender

Topping:

1 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 tsp. cinnamon

Mix together and set aside in a small bowl.

Lemon Lavender Muffins

We have a lot of culinary grade lavender! And lavender goes great with lemon. I adapted a recipe from Tide & Thyme for cranberry orange muffins to make them lemon lavender ones, and I threw in some dried cherries for good measure. It works! I brought them other to a friend's place for brunch and movies on this very very snowy and cold Sunday.

Lemon Lavender Muffins

Makes about 12 muffins

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 + 2 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup milk
zest from 1 lemon
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup dried cherries

For streusel topping:
3 Tbsp flour
3 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
2 Tbsp butter

Lavender Meyer Lemon Bars

I had a couple of Meyer lemons (sweeter than normal lemons) lying around from making jam, so I decided to make lemon bars. Laura actually texted me that she wanted to make lavender lemon bars recently, so this baked good is inspired by her! This healthy recipe comes from Tastebook, and I liked it since it calls for less sugar than the standard recipe. I made a good amount of adjustments, but I am certain that the original recipe is also delicous. The original recipe is gluten free. You can find the nutritional facts on the website too.

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup ground almond flour

2 tbsp whole wheat flour

4 tbsp coconut oil, solid (the original recipe calls for butter)

6 tbsp organic cane sugar, divided

4 small Meyer lemons, zested and juiced (about 2 tsp zest and 1/2 cup juice)

2 large eggs

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp lavender flowers

Pinch sea salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease an 8 inch square baking dish. 

In a food processor add the flour, almond flour, lavender, and 4 tbsp sugar to mix. Then add the cold coconut oil and pulse until the mixture looks like crumbly.

Press with fingers into the bottom of the baking pan. Bake for about 10 minutes until the edges start to brown. You can see the lavender flowers speckled in the crust! So pretty.

Zest the lemons and juice them. Add the eggs to the mixture along with the 2 tablespoons flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, baking powder, and salt. Whisk until the lemon mix is a pale yellow color and very thoroughly combined. Pour over the hot crust.

Then put back into the oven for an additional 10 minutes until the bars are set.

Make sure to let the bars cool completely before cutting into them. Since I used coconut oil, I actually had to let the pan sit in the refrigerator a bit for the crust to become, well, crusty.

Lavender Lemon Grilled Chicken

Following Michelle's lead (or joining her cult?), I bought some food-grade lavender at Roxanne's at the Strip, the dried flowers place. I will definitely be baking with it, but I was also looking at savory recipes and wasn't finding anything that I felt like cooking. So instead I went with the marinade from one of my favorite chicken recipes, Rosemary-Lemon Oven Fried Chicken, and subbed the lavender for the rosemary. And I grilled it instead of "frying" it in the oven - but that would also be good!

It's kind of spring-ish! At least until about an hour ago... So I'm calling this a spring recipe since it's grilled and you don't need any of the more summery veggies or herbs. Unless you want to use fresh lavender, which would be awesome.

This was on Sunday - the puppy and the plants enjoying the sun.

Vegan Lavender Scones

Great minds think alike!!! Aka Kate and I both made scones in the same weekend. I made these for a wonderful brunch hosted by my friend, Melody. We had blackberry scones that were gluten free and biscuits plus other various treats from Food Glorious Food (obsessed with these!). Anyways, I had made these once before with sour cream (which the recipe calls for) but this time I substituted soy yogurt with successful results. The recipe is from a site called the Joys of Lavender (too cute). Just like Kate's scones, these are pretty chewy and soft.

1 tsp. chopped dried lavender (we crushed ours in a mortar and pestle)
1 1/2 cups white whole-wheat flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup soy yogurt

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Grease a baking sheet.   In a medium size bowl , mix the dry ingredients together. Add the sour cream and stir with a large spoon until the dry ingredients are damp. This dough is very sticky. Flour your hands and turn the dough onto the greased baking sheet. Adding flour to your fingers as needed, form the dough into a disc that is 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick.

Sprinkle coarse sugar crystals onto the dough along with a some lavender buds. Bake for 10 minutes, then take out of the oven. Right away wth a sharp knife, slice the scone pie into 8 wedges. Separate them and then bake for another 5 minutes until golden brown.

Vegan Lavender Earl Grey Cupcakes

This recipe is from a website that has a ton of vegan recipes for those that follow the Orthodox Lenten tradition, which basically means eating vegan for 40 days. For lent this year, I decided to follow the Orthodox lifestyle (except for I'm still eating eggs). Anyways, I could not find the website where I originally got the recipe from so I could not cite it. Sorry whoever you are! You have really good recipes, especially this cake!

Makes about 30 cupcakes or one large 9x13 inch cake.

2 cups earl grey tea
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup applesauce
2 tablespoons vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons culinary lavender
3 1/2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda

Brew 2 cups strong earl grey tea (or even better earl grey lavender tea, found in the strip district!!!) and let cool.

Meanwhile, either chop the lavender or use a mortar and pestle to crush the lavender.

Sometimes if I don't feel like chopping the lavender, I just throw it in whole. Just expect lavender chunks then if you go that route. Then combine the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and lavender) and mix with a wire whisk until thoroughly combined.
Combine the oil, applesauce, and vanilla. Then add the earl grey tea and vinegar. Add the dry mixture slowly, bit by bit, to the wet mixture while stirring gently. The vinegar makes the batter foam, so don't worry if that happens.

Once the cake batter is combined, divide evenly into lined cupcake tins. I filled the cupcake tins about 3/4 of the way.

Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. If making a cake, grease a 9x13 inch baking pan and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes instead.

I like to make a white icing for this cake using powdered sugar, almond milk, and coconut cream.

Lavender Earl Grey Cookies

A standard recipe that I make is Lavender Earl Grey vegan cake, so I was thinking why not cookies? These were a test to make for the cookie table in May! They were a success according to a couple taste testers (aka Laura, Kim, and Sara!). The flavor of the tea and lavender is so fragrant in this buttery shortbread cookie. The recipe came from here via a basic Google search.

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp loose earl grey tea
1 tbsp dried culinary lavender
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup powdered sugar
2 sticks butter, at room temperature

1. Use a coffee grinder or a food processor to grind the tea and the lavender. You just want the leaves to be fine enough that you would want to eat them in a cookie. You could also chop the leaves finely.

2. Mix all the dry ingredients with a wire whisk.

3. Blend with butter until the mixture is smooth.

4. Put the dough in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes or so.

5. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Form discs of dough out of 1/2 teaspoonful balls. Really you can do whatever shape you want. Since this is a shortbread cookie, it retains its shape when you bake it.

6. Bake for about 7 minutes or until the cookies are lightly golden brown around the edges.