Pollen and Honey Shortbread
A home-baked butter cookie with foraged pine or cattail pollen, honey, and lemon. Bakes at home, rides in the lid pocket.
- calories
- 290
- weight
- 2.2 oz
- cal / oz
- 132
- protein
- 4 g
- serves
- 6, scales
- prep
- 25 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 25 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Snack
- Dessert
- No cook
- Backpacking
- Day hike
- Car camping
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- Eat in the bag
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Butter | 1 stick (4 oz) | room temperature, or it will not whip |
|---|---|---|
| Pine or cattail pollen | 1/4 cup | collected in spring, dried and sifted |
| All-purpose flour | 1 cup | cake flour if you want them softer |
| Egg | 1 large | |
| Mild honey | 1/3 cup | clover or wildflower; dark honey buries the pollen |
| Kosher salt | 1/4 tsp | |
| Lemon zest | from half a lemon |
Method
- At home: stir the flour, salt, and pollen together in a bowl so the pollen is evenly spread before any fat touches it.
- Beat the butter, honey, egg, and lemon zest until the mixture is smooth and no longer looks broken. Add the dry mix and work it in until the dough is uniform.
- Roll the dough into a log on buttered parchment. Chill it overnight, or at minimum a few hours. This is not optional; the flour needs the time to take up moisture or the cookies come out sandy.
- Heat the oven to 325F. Roll the chilled log smooth, slice into 1/2 inch rounds, and space them on a sheet. Score a cross-hatch on top with the back of a knife if you want them to look deliberate.
- Bake 5 minutes for tender and slightly fudgy, 7 to 10 for a dry, snappy shortbread. The longer bake travels better.
- Cool completely before packing. Warm cookies sweat and go soft in the bag.
- In camp: open bag, eat.
Pollen is a fat-friendly ingredient, and shortbread is mostly fat, so the two get along. A quarter cup of pine or cattail pollen gives the crumb a dense, faintly waxy chew you cannot get from flour alone. Honey is the only sweetener here, which keeps the dough soft and slows it drying out in a pack.
The overnight chill does the real work. It firms the butter for clean slicing and lets the flour hydrate, which is the difference between a cookie and a pile of crumbs at the bottom of your food bag. Nothing happens at camp except opening the bag, so this counts as no-cook once you are walking. Butter and egg are baked through, so the cookies hold at ambient temperature for about a week.
Packing
Cool fully, then stack in a rigid container or a crush-proof corner of the lid pocket. The dough log also freezes for up to six months if vacuum sealed, so you can bake the day before a trip instead of the week before.
Variations
- Swap in gluten-free flour one for one; the dough is short enough that it does not need gluten.
- Bake the full 10 minutes for a hot, humid trip. Crisper cookies stale slower.
- Roll the dough thin and bake it flat as a slab, then break it into shards to save space.
https://foragerchef.com/pollen-and-honey-cookies