Lavender & Almond Snowball Cookies

Bee Bee of Honey Bee Sweets has requested for the recipe of the lavender cookies and almond shortbread that I have prepared during the food blogger's gathering because her girl loved it so much! :) Of course I'm more than happy to share the recipe, so that this happiness would be able to spread on, by both the giver (the one who bakes) and the receiver (one who receives the cookies). ;)

The lavender cookie was a recipe adapted from Angie's Recipes. I find that there are not many lavender cookie recipes around online and I can't find a single one in my recipe books. I'd wanted to give a go at Happy Homebaker's lemon lavender shortbread but when I read how she described the dough as rather unmanageable, I thought I had better err on the save side by googling for a more full proof recipe, hence eventually I settled for Angie's lavender cookies. I did not make much modifications to her recipe except that I had used butter instead of margarine, reduced the sugar slightly and I made it smaller. As I did not press the cookie flat enough, the first batch that came out was a little soft, some did not have the "crunch" you'd want in a cookie. So I had to send to the oven to bake for another 3-4 minutes.


I called my almond shortbread "almond snowball" because this was the name of the cookie as printed in "Okashi Treats" by keiko ishida". The cookie looked pretty much like a snowball and is one of my favourite type of cookie because I love the melt-in-your mouth texture. It is sometimes called "russian teacakes" or "mexican wedding cakes". Unlike melting moments, which is quite similar but contains only flour and sometimes corn starch to produce this a melt-in-your-mouth texture immediately when you put it into your mouth, this recipe replaces some of the flour with almond meal that gives a more crunchy exterior and melts in your mouth only when you have bite into the interior. I actually prefer this kind of texture bcause it is not so fragile especially when you are packing it in little cookie bags, and it will not stick into your teeth that much. :)



Almond Snowball

Ingredients:

150g pastry flour (I used cake flour)
120g insalted butter
50g icing sugar + more for dusting
a pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
50g ground almonds (I did not have enough ground almonds hence I grounded some whole hazel nuts to make up to 50g)


Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Sift flour once. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Beat butter, sugar, salt and vanilla extract until softened. Fold flour and ground almonds into butter mixture using a spaula. Chill dough for about 20 minutes.
3. Roll dough into small balls, about 8g each (I did not measure and I just roll according to my preferred size) and place on the baking sheet.
4. Bake for about 20 minutes (I used about 18 minutes as my dough was smaller), remove from heat and leave to cool on wire rack.
5. Once cooled, dust with icing sugar and store in an airtight container.

Recipe adapted from: "Okashi Treats" by keiko ishida