Easy Lemon Lavender Shortbread Cookies

Let’s bake delicious Lemon Lavender Shortbread Cookies from scratch. This is an easy recipe for a quick Saturday or Sunday afternoon bake!

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Lemon Lavender Shortbread Cookies

Ingredients

1 Tablespoon Lemon Zest

1 Teaspoon of Dried Whole Lavender Flowers (Food-grade/Edible/Culinary Only)

1/2 Cup (or 1 Stick) of Salted Butter, cubed at room temperature

1 Cup of Flour

1 Tablespoon of Milk

Yield: Approximately 30 Cookies (2-inch Round)

Time: 45 Minutes

Step 1: Zest the lemons and extract the juice. The zest will be used for the cookies and the juice will be used for the glaze later. A zester and lemon juicer comes in handy for this!

Step 2: Gently combine lemon zest and dried lavender. Set aside.

Tip: It’s important to make sure that the flowers are food grade, culinary lavender.

Step 3: Place butter cubes into a mixing bowl then add granulated sugar. Use a hand mixer to cream together the butter and sugar on medium speed it should be light and creamy.

Step 4: Sprinkle lemon zest and lavender mix over the creamed butter and sugar. Mix it all on low speed until combined. No need to pull out a stand mixer. A hand mixer works well for this!

Step 5: Add ½ cup of flour to the bowl and mix on low speed until combined. Finally add the other ½ cup of flour and continue to mix on low speed. The dough will look crumbly and this is normal.

Step 6: Add milk and mix the dough at a low speed until it's combined. The milk will help the dough stick to itself a little better. The dough may still look crumbly, but it should stick to itself when gently pressed together.

Step 7: Transfer dough to plastic wrap and wrap the dough tightly into a rectangle shape.

Step 8: Chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

Step 9: Remove chilled dough from the plastic wrap, lightly dust the top of the dough and roll it out on parchment paper that's been lightly dusted with flour. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough to an even thickness, about ¼ of an inch. If the dough starts to crumble a bit or looks dry don't worry.  Shortbread cookie dough is very forgiving and can be gently pressed back into place. The dough can be pressed and re-rolled to yield as many cookies as possible once the cookie sheet.

Step 10: Use a round cookie cutter to cut circles from smooth areas of the dough. A 2” diameter cutter makes the perfect sized cookie! Place the cookie dough circles about two inches away from each other on a silicone baking mat placed onto a cookie sheet. If you don't have a silicone mat you can line a cookie sheet with parchment.

Step 11: Bake the cookies at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 12 minutes

Step 12: Remove from the oven and allow the cookies to cool for five minutes. The cookies will look quite light on the top but the bottoms will be slightly browned.

Step 13: Place the warm cookies directly onto a cooling rack to cool down completely. These cookies are delicious as is, but for more lemon flavor you can make and apply a simple lemon glaze.

Lemon Glaze

Ingredients:

1 Cup Powdered Sugar

1/2 Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract

2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice

Yield: Approximately ¼ Cup

Time: 5 Minutes

 Step 1: Combine powdered sugar, vanilla extract and fresh-squeezed lemon juice in a mixing bowl

Step 2: Whisk the mixture until the glaze is completely combined and flows off the whisk freely.

Step 3: Fill a piping bag with the glaze. Cut the very tip of the bag.

Step 4: Drizzle the cookies using nice even pressure. The glaze starts off soft but hardens as it dries it will be set enough to handle the cookies without smudging them in about one hour

Storage: These cookies can be stored at room temperature in an airtight container for up to two weeks!