Coffee shop. Lavender coffee. Sweet.

How is lavender good for you? Lavender is a popular item on menus these days. What’s the attraction all about? Could be about health and nutrition. Probably it’s because lavender provides many good uses. If you’re like me, sweet lavender coffee doesn’t stop the indulging at a favorite coffee shop. Recently, I ordered a hot lavender coffee with whipped cream – and an almond and raspberry scone.

coffee shop
Coffee Shop Blogging

Reasons lavender is good for you

I love the smell of lavender. However, it’s a fairly new flavor of beverage for me. The lavender coffee actually tasted very good, maybe not what I’d make a habit of drinking. On the other hand, I like lavender herbal tea. It’s supposed to have a calming effect and help with stress. Occasionally, I drink it at night to unwind. So let’s look at some of the benefits of this sweet-smelling herb.

“If you decide to make a purchase through my link, Amazon will pay me a commission for it. This doesn’t cost you anything additional. These commissions help to keep the rest of my content free, so thank you!”

Lavender is an herb that has multiple uses. Grow it in your garden. It makes nice aromatic soaps and other crafts and can add a nice scent to your home. I use lavender essential oil when I’m under stress or can’t get to sleep, and it works well for me.

Health benefits:

I’m not a medical practitioner or medical professional and am only sharing information I’ve researched and/or have read about. This blog post is only intended to share interesting information I’ve read about lavender benefits. Personally, I find the use of lavender interesting because I look for natural ways to care for my health as much as possible.

My maternal grandmother never went to a doctor until her eighties (not sure if she ever used lavender, though). I’m not suggesting that anyone should do the same as she did. But I have always been amazed that she lived a healthy life for so long and didn’t go to doctors. I remember occasionally she would get sick and my parents would bring her to our home to care for her. Eventually, she’d be well again. One thing she did every year, though, was to plant an enormous garden. She shared her vegetables with any of her ten children and their families as well as with neighbors.

Below I’ve listed a few lavender benefits found on Dr. Axe’s website for major diseases and minor ailments.

  • Improves mood and reduces stress
  • Natural treatment for diabetes
  • Improves brain function
  • Help to heal burns and wounds
  • Improves sleep
  • Slow aging with powerful antioxidants
  • Relieves pain

Recipe ideas:

Have you ever tasted food with lavender? I’ve heard people say that lavender coffee or treats taste like soap. Keep in mind what Dawn Perry says at bonappetite.com: “Culinary lavender is suitable for consumption while ornamental lavender isn’t (necessarily).”

I went on a search and found lavender recipes that I can’t wait to try:

  • Lemon and Lavender Chicken – Lemon in chicken recipes I’ve tried but not the lavender. This one’s going on my to-make list.
  • Lemongrass-Lavender Green Sun Tea – You can use lemongrass or lemon balm herbs with lavender as well. I froze lavender and lemon balm herbs from my kitchen garden and put them in the freezer for later use. How you freeze the herbs is to dry them, layer on a single sheet, chopped or whole, and place them in a freezer bag or container. Freeze, and take out what you need for recipes.
  • I have a thing for scones and also for vanilla and lavender hot tea. No wonder this vanilla lavender scone recipe looks yummilicious to me.
  • Lavender and cheese olives is another recipe I saw that is interesting to me particularly because I’m currently curing olives. Hand-stuffed olives, special-seasoned olives, and even olive wood from Mediterranean areas can be expensive – but worth purchasing when it’s quality. For instance, this olive wood cutting board I purchased from Enoe Designs is one of a kind and an excellent addition to my kitchen:Stuffing olives with goat cheese and lavender (you can purchase them on Amazon) piqued my interest because I’ve gone through the process of curing olives for the first time. A friend who has an olive tree in her yard gave me permission to pick olives. They filled two jars. Curing involved allowing the olives to set for months in coarse salt and water.

curing olives

Though they are edible now, the last thing left to do is blend herbs and seasonings with the olives and let them set a while longer. I am thinking of separating the one jar of olives into two groups, one that includes my lavender herb from the garden and one with  Mediterranean spices like oregano and basil stuffed with mozzarella cheese.

Before finishing the olive curing with spices, I gave one jar to another friend whose husband ate all the olives and loved them (he likes salty foods). However, I ate one and could barely eat it because it was way too salty for me. I’ll blog later about my complete olive-curing process and let you know how they turn out with lavender and cheese.

Almond and raspberry scone. Sweet.

Almond, raspberry, and lavender – how does that combination sound to you? It’s a sweet tasty combination of two when one is an almond/raspberry scone and the other is lavender coffee topped with whipped cream. Almond is a fav flav of mine in a scone, hot tea, iced tea, blended beverage, or just about any treat. Although I prefer almond and vanilla together, I do like raspberries – especially freshly picked ones.

The list below includes scone flavors that I plan to try, begins with a dried cherry (and I love dried cherries) almond recipe, and wraps up with a yummy almond and raspberry recipe:

  • Dried cherry and almond scones
  • Lemon almond scones – Lemon and blueberry desserts are addicting, and I think lemon with almond may taste just as good.
  • If you keep orange juice in the fridge, this recipe should be fairly easy to make: scone made with orange juice.
  • Years ago Barnes & Noble’s Starbucks in the northern states made a delicious orange scone that I would love to have the recipe of. The only solution may be for me to make orange scones until I come up with the closest to that one I used to love. The closest I could find online was Orange Zest Scones. The recipe doesn’t have almond in it, but you can add almond extract. Several of the orange scones I discovered on my search are made with a fluffy frosting or light glaze. The Starbucks orange scone icing version, however, was more like a soft crispy texture – a whole other subject that would take more time to research. Here is a cake icing conversation thread that arrives at a close description of the crispy orange icing I recall.
  • The last one in this list, Raspberry Almond Buttermilk Scones, looks just like the one I ate at the coffee shop with the yumdelish lavender coffee.

You probably have figured out by now that I love scones, exactly why I seldom have baked them. I’d want to eat them too often. But once in awhile, on special occasions, scones are nice for a change. Almond, orange, raspberry – okay, any flavor. I’ll eat any of the flavored treats if they’re in front of me.

If you’ve baked any of the scones mentioned in this post, did you do anything differently? I’d love to hear about your favorite scones.

 

 

 

Leave a Comment Below:

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.