Lavender Shortbread

To properly celebrate the recent thawing...and to set daintily on the plate beside you as you begin seeding your early brassicas:
(this recipe is why we will always grow plenty of lavender on our farm!!)

Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 C butter (room temp)
(and we mean butter, real butter...the kind that makes for Grecian figures...)
2/3 C Sugar
2 Tbsp finely chopped lavender florets
1 Tbsp chopped fresh mint
2 1/3 C flour
1/2 C cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt

Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
Line the bottoms of two baking sheets with parchment.
Cream together the butter, sugar, mint, and lavender until light and fluffy. (3 min.)
Add flour, cornstarch, salt....
Divide the dough into two halves and flatten into squares or circles. Chill until firm.

When firm, cut into circles or rectangles....prick all over with a fork. This is the lovely part. It makes your cookies look so British, and taken with tea you could do no better over the pond, as they say.
Bake 20-25 min.
Another splendid way to enjoy them is while soaking up to your chin in a deep rose-scented bath contemplating the seeds that you are going to order for your 2011 garden...or packed in wax paper packets for the kids' pockets as they go and make forays amongst the chickens into the mud patches popping up in the yard as the snow melts...