I have some obsessions. You may have noticed. Chocolate. Chocolate cookies. Chocolate paired with herbs. Chocolate with herbs and salt and made into a cookie! I’m imagining you tipping your head, in that Labrador puppy kinda way – “Chocolate and…herbs? With salt? That sounds a bit horrible”. I promise you, it’s all going to be okay. Have I ever lead you astray? Let me cuddle you in close and solemnly vow that this cookie is not horrible in the least. In fact, Matt today declared “Better than your afghans” which is a BIG statement. So, do you trust me….?

 

 

I know what you might be musing about lavender – Grandma. And those linen pouches stuffed into drawers to keep the moths away. But don’t despair because, in the same way that kids all over the place are being named ‘Maude’ and ‘Violet’ and ‘Esmeralda’, lavender is cool again. It’s true! Don’t believe me?  Check out this article that suggests including it in, well, just about everything. Lavender salt crushed over fresh, new potatoes? Garlic and lavender roast lamb? I dare you not to swoon a little.

 

Depending on how you use it, lavender can be sharp, oily practically menthol-y, or subtle and delightfully fragrant. Probably the best way to ensure a rounded and consistent flavour is to do what I did with the rosemary in the Chocolate + Rosemary recipe and scald it with your milk of cream. {That would work beautifully for ganache to ice a cake, just quietly. My birthday is in July.} But in this recipe I have used it in the fashion of sea salt flakes – as a garnish, as a little mouth teaser. So that just when you think you really know this cookie…  *nudge!*… a teeny, tiny lavender bud bursts releasing a hint of fragrant oil between your teeth and the whole cookie suddenly seems a LOT more interesting. Date-able, practically. So it’s a very subtle note of lavender in these cookies, I could probably handle a lot more, but they pleased my whole family no end, so I’m going to class the recipe a winner and leave the dosage as is. Feel free to mess about with it to suit your needs.

 

 

Dark chocolate, sea salt + lavender cookies

Yield: Approximately 20 cookies

 

Ingredients

113 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature
25 grams white sugar
25 grams turbinado / raw sugar
165 grams packed light or dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
Heaped 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
195 grams all-purpose flour

50 grams cocoa
210 grams semi- or bittersweet chocolate, cut into chunks and bits

2 teaspoons of lavender buds

Flaky sea salt, to finish

 

Method

Heat oven to 360°F / 180°C and line a tray with baking paper.

 

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugars together with an electric mixer until very light and fluffy (about 5 minutes).

 

Add egg and vanilla, beating until incorporated, and scraping down the bowl as needed.

 

Beat in fine sea salt and baking soda until combined, then add the flour on a low speed until just mixed. The dough will look crumbly at this point.

 

With a spatula, fold/stir in the chocolate chunks and 1 teaspoon of lavender buds.

 

{ Now – here’s the thing – the cookies taste better if you refrigerate the mixture overnight before baking. WHAT?! I hear you screaming. Don’t worry, I can’t bear that either. My approach to make a full tray of cookies immediately and wrap the leftover mix in glad wrap / plastic film and pop into the fridge for baking some time during the next two or three days when the urge for cookies overwhelms me. Really great cookies one day, amazing cookies the next – that’s a win : win, right? }

 

Scoop cookies into 1 1/2 tablespoon mounds, spacing them apart on the prepared baking sheet.

 

Sprinkle each with a few flakes of sea salt and a few lavender buds.

 

Bake for 11 to 13 minutes (will still be very gooey and soft inside). Let the cookies rest on the baking sheet out of the oven for 5 – 10 minutes before transferring a cooling rack.

 

Once cooled I highly recommend transferring cookie to hand, pouring a glass of cold milk with the other and dunking that hunk of salty, floral dark chocolate cake-ish-ness into it. Then straight into your open mouth, quick-smart. Cookie should be soft, a little brownie-esque, with a nice, slightly cracked crust. Deeply, densely, deliciously cocoa flavoured, with pockets of soft, dark, oozy chocolate and sprinkled with those darling lavender buds and mouth-watering salt flakes for extra taste-bud rapture.

 

 

See? That wasn’t horrible at all. I told you you could trust me.

Love,

Hannah x

 

P.S. Keen on more baking with flowers? Check out Ria’s gorgeous recipe and photos of Lilac Scones.  We do love our purple blooms here at Fork and Fiction.