These delicate treats, Queen Victoria’s Hearts Cookie, served by award-winning baker and innkeeper Carolyn Eichin of B Street House Bed and Breakfast in Virginia City, Nevada, are deliciously lacy, buttery, and have just a hint of lavender.

Queen Victoria Heart’s Cookies 

Recipe courtesy Carolyn Eichen, B Street House Bed and Breakfast, Virginia City, NV.

 Note from Carolyn: This is a shortbread type of very short and buttery cookie with just a light flavor of lavender. It is said that Queen Victoria liked to eat a lavender-flavored food at every meal. I use a mix of culinary lavender that I purchase from a lavender farm. I find the farm mix has a bolder lavender flavor.

 Makes about 3 dozen 2 inch sized cookies.

Ingredients:

2 sticks cold butter

½ cup powdered sugar

2 cups flour

2 tsp crushed culinary lavender

¼ to 1/3 cup turbinado sugar for garnish

1 to 2 tsp cold heavy cream

Method:

Mix dry ingredients together in a medium mixing bowl. Crush the lavender in palm of the hands until ground and mix into dry ingredients. Cut butter into mixture with a pastry cutter. This will be very crumbly and will not hold together like dough. Add a little heavy cream, one teaspoon at a time until dough will hold together. Pick up dough and mix together by hand until dough hold together in a ball. Refrigerate dough for one hour or more until very chilled. Roll out dough on a floured board with a floured rolling pin. Cut dough with heart shaped cookie cutters (about 2 inches across) and place on parchment paper on a baking sheet. Top each cookie with a sprinkling of turbinado sugar before baking. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 9 to 10 minutes until edges of cookies start to turn light golden brown.

No adjustment for high elevation.

Hungry for more? Enjoy more English-themed cooking and baking with this Downton Abbey Cookbook. Learn more about growing and using lavender in this podcast.

Pin this recipe to your favorite baking board on Pinterest.