Professor Butter Beard’s “An Orchard in Spring”
“Is the spring coming?” he said. “What is it like?”…
“It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…”
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
High spring has sprung. Nellie and I now wake to birdsong through the open window instead of an electronic tune vibrating from my mobile phone. A clinging mist seeps into our skins during our first walk of the morning, no matter how many layers I have quickly thrown on or how much hot coffee I sip when she stops to hunt for her dog friend’s aroma or snap at a morning bumble bee. We’ve watched the landscape evolve from leftover grey snow to dancing yellow daffodils, to majestic red tulips and now to dainty white and pale purple violets stretching into the muddy pathways.
Many of the 19th century’s most revolutionary painters were also enamored with the burst of purple in spring. Claude Monet, in particular, championed the rich color in his Impressionist paintings. It is written that he believed that violet was able to harness the dimensionality of shadow better than black and used the color fearlessly on his canvases. “I have finally discovered the true color of the atmosphere,” he once noted. “It is violet. Fresh air is violet.” His enthusiasm rubbed off on his fellow Impressionists, and soon the group’s penchant for the springtime hue was being described as “violettomania” by both critics and supporters. I would, without question, be one of the group’s most ferocious supporters, but I do chuckle when I read that one of the critics of the period described the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877 Paris as having the “overall effect of a worm-eaten Roquefort cheese.”
“An Orchard in Spring” is thought to be one of the finest of all Impressionist works capturing springtime. Monet painted the scene in the blooming apple orchard within the gardens at Giverny in Normandy. He had rented the house on the property and so grew to love it that he would later purchase the entire estate and be inspired to paint his water lily works. Seated beneath the flowering canopy is Suzanne Hoschedé, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Monet’s then mistress, and later second wife, Alice. To date, this luscious dreamscape is still in a private collection, but maybe someday we all will be able to join Suzanne on her picnic and experience “violettomania” alongside her.
In keeping with the pastel springtime theme, I baked these filled shortbread cookies as a “so good to see you again” gift for my favorite farmers when the Red Bank Farmer’s Market reopens this Mother’s Day Sunday. Mint is one of the first plants to burst forth again in my herb garden and the jam comes from the first rhubarb to appear in the markets. Be sure to bake a few extra for yourself and grab a novel and a blanket and stretch out and decompress among the springtime violets.
Mint Shortbread Cookies Filled with Rhubarb Jam
(60 cookies to make 30 filled sandwiches)
Shortbread Cookies:
1/3 cup fresh mint leaves (the younger the better)
2 Tbsp granulated sugar
12 ounces (three sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
¾ cup confectioners’ sugar
2 tsp vanilla paste
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp kosher salt
Confectioners’ sugar to dust finished cookies
Filling:
¾ to 1 cup of your favorite homemade jam (I really prefer rhubarb with the minted shortbreads)
1) In a spice grinder, pulse the mint leaves and the granulated sugar just until the mint is torn in the small pieces.
2) In a standing mixer, cream together the butter, the minted granulated sugar and confectioners’ sugar with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy
3) Mix in the vanilla paste
4) With the mixer on low, stir in the salt and then the 3 cups flour until just incorporated
5) Gather into a dough, cover with plastic wrap and chill for thirty minutes
6) Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and line your cookie sheets with parchment paper
7) Divide the dough in half and roll out the first half to ¼ inch thickness (think the thickness of a nickel coin). Cut out as many circles as possible with a 2-inch cookie cutter (I use a fluted cutter). Place the cut circles on the parchment-lines sheets. Re-gather the left-over dough once and cut circles again. Do the same with the second half of the dough. Dock the cookies with a fork and lightly sprinkle half the cookies with sanding sugar.
8) Bake the cookies 15 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through and letting the edges slightly brown. Remove from the oven. Let them cool 5 minutes on the baking sheets then transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
9) When fully cooled, drop one teaspoon on the plain half of the cookies and gently dust the tops with confectioners’ sugar.
