Friday, May 13, 2016

Beltane Recipes:

Pansy Shortbread Cookies

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Ingredients:
  • 1 ¼ cups flour
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • ½ cup room temperature butter
  • ¼ tsp vanilla
  • 1 TBS dried egg whites
  • 2TBS  water
  • Pesticide free Pansies or violas
Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Pick flowers, rinse and pat dry. Put on paper towel to finish air drying.
Put flour and sugar in a large bowl. Mix together. Using a pastry cutter, cut in butter and vanilla until mixture resembles fine crumbs and starts to cling together.

Gather up crumbs into a ball and kneed together until smooth.

Roll out dough just scant of ¼" thick. Cut with cookie cutter. I used a fluted  2 ½"cookie cutter.
Put cookies 2" apart on parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes, until the bottom and sides are just starting to slightly brown and center of top is firm.
Take out of oven and cool on baking sheet. 
Combine dried egg whites and water in small bowl. When cookies are cooled brush egg white mixture on one cookie at a time and top with pansey. Use your fingers to press the pansy down in the middle and smooth out all petals so they are firmly stuck to the cookie. Put a thin layer of egg white mixtrue on top of the pansy and smooth. Sprinkle lightly with sugar. Return to parchment lined baking sheet.
Bake at 325 degrees for 5 minutes. Remove from oven. With your finger smooth out any petals that have shrivelled up. Set out on a cooling rack until the top of the cookie is completely dry.
Plate and enjoy!
P.S. Shortbread cookies are quite easy to make and fixing the pansy on top was really fun. Very impressive for the little work they take. They taste buttery and sweet, and the pansies have no taste to interfere with the lovely shortbread flavor. I would have to call this a WOW factor dessert.
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Dandelion Cupcakes


Ingredients:
  • 2-¼ cups unbleached white flour
  • 1-2/3 cups sugar (or natural sweetener of your choice)
  • 1 cup dandelion flowers (just the yellow part)
  • 3-½ teaspoons baking power
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/¼ cup buttermilk
  • 2/3 cup shortening
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 5 egg whites
Directions:
Heat oven to 350 degrees (F). Grease and flour a rectangular pan, 2 round pans or line a cupcake tin with paper baking cups. Beat all of the ingredients, except the egg whites in a large mixing bowl on low speed for about a minute. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl with spatula to make sure that all of the ingredients get incorporated. Add the egg whites one at a time, beating on high speed, again scraping the bowl. Pour mixture into pan.
Bake rectangular pan for 4—45 minutes (9-inch rounds or cupcakes for 30-35 minutes) or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes before removing from pan to cool completely. Frost the cake with a creamy butter icing if desired. Garnish with a single dandelion flower or frosting and yellow sprinkles.
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Rose Petal Jelly

Ingredients:
  • 2 cups water
  • 3 cups unsprayed pink rose petals, thicker tissue at base of petals removed
  • 2 ½ cups sugar
  • ¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 3 ounces liquid pectin (or double this)
  • 1 tablespoon rose water
Process:
  1. Bring the water to a boil in a medium saucepan; remove from heat. Add petals; cover, and steep for 30 minutes. Strain liquid into clean saucepan. Discard petals.
  2. Add sugar and lemon juice to pan. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring, over medium-high heat. Boil 2 minutes; add pectin, and boil 2 minutes (for firmer jelly, boil up to 2 minutes more). Remove from heat, add rose water. Pour into sterilized jars, and let cool completely. Store in refrigerator up to 6 months.