I’ve mentioned my Aunt Khaki several times before. She is the youngest of my mother’s siblings and when it comes to food and exercise, she is one of my main role models. Unfortunately, Khaki lives all the way out in Santa Monica so we don’t get to bake together very much. It’s kind of a bummer, but that’s where snail mail comes in and saves the day.

We’re able to have a long distance baking relationship and I was thrilled to see a glorious box of heaven on our kitchen when I got home from work the other day. Khaki raised the bar once again with her creations. She made a salty maple pecan fudge, pistachio nougat, rum raisin chocolate, and four different types of buttery sugary cookies.

There were four different flavors of cookies and Khaki color-coded the cookie bags with a specific color of ribbon and I was supposed to guess the ingredients (isn’t that a cute idea!?). The jury is still out on a few, but there was definitely basil, lavendar, lemon, and vanilla bean.

The cookies were perfectly crispy and buttery and apparently very easy to make. As a result, I wanted to share one of the  recipes, the vanilla bean, with all of you. You can skip out on the vanilla bean if you want, but I think using it takes the cookie to the next level.

Whelp… I’ve got a lot of work to do before I send my chunk-inducing box of sweets out west. Look for more of Aunt Khaki’s creations in the next months. I want to start including more of her recipes on LST because she has so many delicious and creative ideas. Thanks so much, Aunt Khaki!

Aunt Khaki’s Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookies

Printable Version

Yield: 3 dozen cookies

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 cup butter, at room temp
• 2 vanilla beans
• 2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 large egg