Bay Leaf & Lemon Shortbread

As is the case with most shortbread, there's nothing overly complicated going on with the actual making and baking of these cookies. It is, however, worth being aware of a couple of pieces of equipment that will make the process much easier, and a few modifications that you can make if you're so inclined. I'm also going to touch on what kind of bay leaf to use, because yes, there are in fact multiple kinds of bay leaf out there in the world!

The leaves of the bay laurel tree are incredibly popular in cooking, and yet, I feel, somewhat underutilized.  They also seem to be somewhat poorly understood - or even recognized, given that there's a meme-load of irate tweets from Chipotle customers complaining about the leaves in their burritos.  So let's start with some facts.

The bay laurel (Laurus nobilis) is an ornamental and culinary evergreen shrub/tree native to the Mediterranean region.  Interestingly, much of the Mediterranean was once covered in dense and humid forests of laurel (of various species), but the region began to dry out a few million years ago, causing the laurels to retract into patches and pockets in various countries.  Bay laurel leaves are highly aromatic, and have long been used to add flavour to a variety of recipes.  They figure prominently in Italian cooking (e.g. pasta sauces), and in various stews and slow-cooked dishes.

But the bay leaf is not inherently limited to savoury preparations; it's got a beautiful, resinous, aroma that works in all kinds of places.  The leaves have a lot of eugenol in them, which is a compound found in (amongst other things) cloves, cinnamon, basil, and nutmeg.  As you can see, that list already includes a bunch of spices that comfortably reside on both sides of the sweet-vs-savoury question.

Now, it's important to note that there are a couple of different things out there in the world that fall under the moniker of 'bay leaf' and they're not all interchangeable.  This recipe uses dried bay laurel leaves, which are what you'll generally find labeled as bay leaves in Western grocery stores.  Fresh bay leaves are NOT interchangeable with dried bay leaves for three very important reasons. First, the intensity of flavour isn't the same.  Second, the resin and moisture in the fresh leaves makes them harder to grind.  Third, and perhaps most importantly, they're often not even the same kind of bay leaves.  In North America, the fresh bay leaves found in stores often come from California bay laurel (aka Oregon myrtle - Umbellularia californica).  California bay has a flavour that's similar to bay laurel, but quite a bit stronger, and often a little more intensely eucalyptus-like.  If you dry your own bay leaves, be aware that California bay will retain this same potency and flavour profile even in this form.

There is another type of bay leaf to be aware of too, and it's altogether different.  The Indian bay leaf (Cinnamomum tamala) is, unsurprisingly, commonly found in Indian grocery stores.  It is sometimes just labeled as 'bay leaf' (at least where I live), so it's worth being aware of the difference.  Indian bay has a pronounced cinnamon flavour, though this is much milder than cinnamon itself.  Indian bay leaves have three central 'ribs' that run parallel to each other, while true bay laurel has just a single central rib.

Alright, let's talk about how to use these lovely, unexpected leaves.

Bay leaves are frequently used in simmered and slow-cooked dishes and removed before serving.  This is because because the rigid, tough structure that makes the leaves unpleasant in a mouthful of food also makes them able to stand up to long cooking times.  This means that bay leaves are unpleasantly tough, but this is hardly a unique problem when it comes to spices.  After all, nobody in their right mind is trying to make an apple pie with chunks of literal cinnamon bark.  It's bark.  We're going to tackle the issue by completely pulverizing the leaves with a spice grinder.  This has the added benefit of making it a lot easier to really get a sense for the distinctive aroma of the bay leaf, which will (I hope) further convince you that this is in fact a good idea.

If you don't have a spice grinder (or clean coffee grinder), you still have a couple of options.  First, you can blitz the leaves with sugar in a high speed blender or food processor.  If that's not an option either, you can manually pulverize the leaves with a mortar and pestle, though it's probably going to be a fair bit of work.  In all cases, you'll probably want to sift the ground bay leaves to eliminate any particularly large bits that escaped crushing.

If grinding bay isn't manageable, you can modify the recipe by making a simple syrup with lemon juice, water, and sugar, then simmering 2 bay leaves in this.  When cooled, this syrup can be used to make the royal icing.  You'll have to do a bit of calculating to get your quantities and ratios right, but it's a viable option.

Royal icing is traditionally made with egg whites, but this presents a couple of challenges. Raw egg whites aren't something that everyone is comfortable using, and pasteurized egg whites aren't necessarily the easiest thing to find. Normally I prefer to work with the simplest and least processed ingredients that I can, but when it comes to royal icing, I really like to use meringue powder instead of egg whites.

Meringue powder is shelf-stable, fully cooked egg-based product that can be used to replace egg whites in various recipes.  When it comes to traditional meringue desserts, I very much prefer to use egg whites, but royal icing becomes easier to make and (perhaps more importantly) more easily flavoured when you use meringue powder.  The easy-to-make part is pretty self-explanatory; no raw egg whites, no separating eggs, just mixing ingredients and you're done.  As for the flavouring aspect, it has to do with the fact that meringue powder requires the addition of liquid to make up for the missing water in the egg whites.  You can just use water, but substituting something like lemon juice (as is the case for this recipe) provides a big hit of flavour that's otherwise difficult to inject into traditional royal icing.

If you prefer to make royal icing with egg whites you still can, though you might find it tricky to get as much lemon flavour in.  I've got a few suggestions in the recipe card below.

Shortbread is a pretty versatile dough when it comes to shaping the cookies. I wanted very consistent shapes and sizes, so I measured out 25 g balls, which were then pressed into a circular cookie cutter and laid out on silicone baking sheets. If that's a bit extreme for you, you can simply scoop out spoonfuls of dough and flatten them out. I personally don't like rolling out shortbread, but if you're willing to let the dough warm up a bit, you can roll it out to a desired thickness and use a cookie cutter.

If you have a shortbread pan, check out the post I did last year on grapefruit-rosemary shortbread for instructions on how to adapt a basic recipe like this one to work in a ceramic pan.  The icing aspect will have to be handled differently, but carefully piped royal icing on the decorative lines made by a shortbread pan would look pretty stunning.

The shortbread dough itself is easily scaled up or down depending on how much you want to make, but the icing is a little trickier.  If you're using a stand mixer, it can be hard to make a batch of royal icing much smaller than the one given in the recipe card, and even this is likely to produce more than you need.  It's a little easier if you're using a hand mixer and a small bowl, but still, the quantities aren't particularly large.  Fortunately, extra icing freezes very nicely!  If you've got more than you can use, put it into a small resealable bag, then lay this flat in the freezer.  It will keep for 6 months or more this way.

If you want to make a lot of cookies (and who could blame you), they also freeze quite nicely, with or without icing.  If you're planning to make batches to give to family and friends, you can make them at your leisure and freeze batches to give away whenever you're ready.  They'll keep for at least a month, most likely longer. Unless your family raids them all while you're distracted, that is.