Chamomile & Lemon Shortbread
Crumbly, floral and dairy-free. A shortbread that puts dried chamomile flowers straight into the dough rather than infusing them, with enough lemon to keep it bright.
Chamomile and lemon shortbread, made with flowers from the garden
I grow Roman chamomile along the edge of a path, where it gets walked on far more than it probably deserves. That is rather the point of it. Tread on the mat and the apple smell comes up at you, which is the thing everyone tells you about chamomile and the one thing that turns out to be entirely true. The flowers are what I actually use. Small white daisies with a yellow centre, appearing from June and carrying on through most of the summer if you keep picking them. They dry on a tray in a week and then sit in a jar until I want them. Most chamomile baking asks you to infuse the flowers into warm butter or milk and then strain them out. This one does not. The flowers go in dry, creamed into the butter and sugar, and they stay in the dough. You get flecks of them through the shortbread and you taste them properly. It does mean the flowers have nowhere to hide. Roman chamomile is the more bitter of the two chamomiles, and most of that bitterness sits in the yellow centre of the flower head. So rub the dried flowers between your fingers until they are fine and dusty before they go anywhere near the butter, and pick out any stalks or bits of green. Ground fine, they read as floral. Left whole, they can read as a hedge. The lemon is not decoration. It sits underneath the chamomile and stops the whole thing drifting towards soap, which floral baking does if you let it.
Ingredients
Makes 20. Prep 15 minutes, cook 15 minutes.
- 200g dairy-free butter
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
- 2 tbsp dried chamomile flowers, ground fine
- Zest of 1 lemon
- 100g caster sugar
- 300g plain flour, sifted
- 1 tbsp corn flour
- A little extra caster sugar, for sprinkling
The method
Rub the dried chamomile flowers between your fingers or grind them briefly in a pestle and mortar until fine. Discard any stalks or green fragments. You want something closer to a coarse powder than a scatter of whole heads.
Cream the dairy-free butter, vanilla paste, ground chamomile, lemon zest and caster sugar together until light and well combined. Take a moment over this. The chamomile needs to be evenly through the mixture, not sitting in pockets.
Stir in the sifted plain flour and the corn flour and mix until it comes together as a dough. It will look dry before it looks right. Keep going and it will come.
Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to firm up. This matters more with dairy-free butter than it does with dairy, as it softens faster in the hand.
Whilst the dough chills, preheat the oven to 160°C (140°C fan) and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
Roll the chilled dough out to roughly ½cm thick and cut into shapes. Lift them onto the lined baking sheet and sprinkle with a little extra caster sugar.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until golden at the edges, turning the tray halfway through so they colour evenly. The centres will still look pale. That is correct.
Leave to cool on the tray for at least 10 minutes before moving them. Shortbread sets as it cools and will break if you rush it.
Growing Roman chamomile
Pick the flowers on a dry morning once they are fully open, and take them before the white petals start bending back from the centre. Spread them one layer deep on a tray somewhere warm and out of direct sunlight, and leave them a week or so until they rustle. Then into a jar, out of the light.
A small patch will give you more than you expect. Enough for tea through the winter, and enough for a batch of these.
Serving
With chamomile tea, which is the obvious pairing and also the correct one. The dried flowers going into the pot and the dried flowers going into the biscuit make sense of each other.
They keep for about a week in an airtight tin, and they are better on day two than on the day you bake them. The chamomile settles into the butter and stops shouting.
They box up well, which makes them a good thing to give away. Mother’s Day, a thank you, something to take round to someone.
