Green Tea & Lavender Cupcakes

Basic Cup Cake Batter

Makes 12 little cup cakes

1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
½ cup castor sugar
2 eggs
1 cup flour
20 mls milk

For the Matcha Tea cakes:
2½ tsp matcha tea powder
few drops vanilla

For the Lavender cakes: 
1 Tbsp dried Lavender petals
⅓ cup milk
few drops vanilla

- heat oven to 400˚F

- put 12 medium muffin liners in a muffin tin

- beat butter and sugar together until creamy. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. (For Matcha cakes, add vanilla here).

- add flour and mix until well incorporated. Add milk and mix.

- bake for 10 – 15 mins. Keep an eye on them, they will go from yumminess to dry and nasty in no time!
- allow to cool completely before icing.

To Make the Lavender Cakes:
- put milk and flowers in a small sauce pan and heat until the milk is piping hot, but not boiling. Remove from heat, cover and allow to steep for a good 20 to 30 mins.

- strain milk, add vanilla and use Lavender milk in place of normal milk in cup cake recipe.

To Make Matcha Cakes:
- add vanilla after eggs

- once batter is mixed, add tea powder and incorporate.

White Chocolate Icing for Matcha Cakes

75 g good white chocolate (using good chocolate makes a big difference)
60 g unsalted butter
2 tsp milk
Icing sugar, about 2 – 3 cups, sifted
3 Tbsp Cream Cheese

- melt chocolate, butter and milk together over a bain marie, stirring until smooth. Remove from heat and allow to cool for a minute.

- add sugar, a half cup at a time, until consistency of mixture is a smooth, easily spreadable paste. Add cream cheese and mix well.

Lavender icing

½ stick unsalted butter, softened
2 or so cups icing sugar, sifted
3 Tbsp Lavender Milk
a drop of blue and red food colouring

- beat butter until creamy. Add icing sugar a bit
at a time until a stiff icing is formed.
Add milk and mix, adjust consistency of
icing with sugar.

- in a small bowl, combine food colouring
with one teaspoon icing. Mix well.
Add to icing, little bit by little bit,
mixing very well in between,
until desired shade is obtained.

Thank you to Lick Your Own Bowl for an awesome recipe.

Lavender Mint Tea Punch

6 Tsp. Dried Mint
6 C. Boiling Water
1 Tbsp. Dried Lavender Blossoms
1 Liter Ginger Ale
1 C. Purple Grape Juice
Ice Cubes w/fresh mint leaf frozen in each

~~Brew the mint in the water in a teapot for 10 minutes. Add the lavender blossoms to the pot. Allow tea to cool. Strain the tea & add the ginger ale, grape juice & ice cubes.

Optional:
Serve in punch bowl and float w/lavender buds and mint sprigs on top.

Lavender Shortbread

Lavender Shortbread
Yield: 16


1 cup / 150g flour
2tbsp cornstarch
¼ tsp salt1 tsp lavender (I used dried)
¼ cup / 50g sugar½ cup / 125g butter
½ tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325F/170C and lightly grease a 9 inch springform pan.

Sift together the flour, cornstarch, sugar and salt and stir in the lavender.
Toss in cubes of chilled butter and blend together until they look like crumbs. (I made it this way as opposed to creaming butter and sugar together).

Place the crumbs into the pan and press down with the hands or a potato masher.
Now is when you can shape the edges with a pattern of your choice and pierce the dough uniformly to prevent it rising when it’s baking.

With a knife, make 16 wedges, so that it’ll be easier to have 16 distinct pieces after it’s done baking.

Bake for 25 minutes or until slightly golden.

Cut pieces when it’s still warm along the lines that were made earlier.

Transfer to a rack to cool.