my most favorite sugar cookie

I have been very blessed to have some amazing grandparents. All of them made huge impacts on my life but my MeeMaw was the one who had the biggest impact on my cooking. I make a ton of her recipes but these cookies are my favorite.

Worth the wait…

The minute we would get to the farm (where she lived) I would go straight to the cookie jar. The cookie jar would sit on a bakers rack at the entrance of the kitchen. It was always loaded with tons of these cookies. It would take us about 12 hours to get there from Texas and every single minute on the way there these cookies were all I could think about.

Once I got into college she would start shipping them to me at school during the Holiday season. I may have waited for the mail man to come once or twice. These cookies are so, so good I would wait as long as I needed to make sure I got them as soon as I could.

a year round treat

I always got these cookies in the summer and around Christmas but now I make them anytime I am craving them. I love to make them for each holiday and sprinkle with something seasonal. Christmas calls for red, green & while polka dots or snowflake sprinkles. For Easter I use bunny sprinkles. For Thanksgiving I use leaf sprinkles and Valentines Day I use these adorable heart sprinkles.

The beauty is you can use any sprinkles you want…or none at all which is my mom’s favorite way to have them.

Changing it up a bit

My MeeMaw was never a stickler for sticking to a recipe. She was always one of those cooks who would kinda make it up as she went along. For these cookies she would sometimes use vanilla extract, or almond extract and a little peppermint extract during the holidays, but for me I am all about using vanilla bean paste.

Vanilla bean paste…why you ask? My answer…IT IS AMAZING!!

I have always been a fan of vanilla beans but when I found vanilla bean paste on Amazon I danced a little bit in my living room. It is everything amazing about vanilla beans but made into a paste so you can use it like vanilla extract….LOVE!

There are a lot of options for vanilla bean paste online but this is my favorite...trust me you need to try it. You will LOVE it!