Premium Lavender Flower Buds

Grovestone's Premium Lavender is sourced in France and can quickly overpower a recipe so use sparingly. This is especially true when using to marinate meats. Lavender has an intense, spicy and sweetly floral aroma with mint and lemon undertones. The taste has a touch of camphor with a hint of bitterness. It has also been described as having the intriguing appeal of a good wine's bouquet.

Premium Lavender flowers are most commonly found in dessert recipes, but as you become more comfortable cooking with this herb, you'll quickly find that it is also a spectacular addition to savory foods. Lavender, like rosemary, adds a robust flavor to roasted meats and is particularly good with chicken, lamb, pheasant and rabbit.

For use in desserts we like to grind a few Lavender flowers along with some sugar into a fine powder called Lavender Sugar - this provides for optimum flavor as the grinding process breaks down the buds while the sugar absorbs the aromatic essential oils. This is especially good with black and red fruits such as blackberries, blueberries, cherries, plums and strawberries.

Lavender works well in combination with marjoram, Mediterranean oregano, parsley, rosemary, savory and thyme.

Some like to scatter the petals over cake as a decoration. You can also experiment with this flavor by steeping the lavender flowers in warm milk, cream, sugar syrups or wine to flavor desserts or sorbets. Lavender homemade ice cream is heavenly and we have also enjoyed it in chocolate mousse.