Vanilla Shortbread

When we were in Tanzania, we had the opportunity to visit an innovative farmer who has been very creative in the ways he is using his land.  He has fish ponds, uses bio-gas from his animals, various kitchen gardens, compost (which he sells and uses on his garden), and he grows vanilla.  He and his wife brought out some vanilla beans for us visitors to buy, if we wanted.  I though it was really cool to buy vanilla from the people who grew it, so I got some and brought it home to Soroti.

Vanilla is really interesting - you have to hand pollinate it and cure it properly before it becomes the nice, fancy beans you can buy in the store.  Maybe someday I'll live somewhere where I can try growing it!

Anyway, I found a recipe for vanilla shortbread that I used some of the vanilla in.  It was really good, but I put them a little too close together on the cookie sheet and they grew together into a giant blob!  The good news is that they were still easy to separate.  I kept them in the fridge, and eating them cold actually was almost better than they were when they were fresh out of the oven.

I used this recipe.  But, I used one whole vanilla bean in the cookies and I didn't put any frosting on top.  I thought they were good enough as they were!