Lemon Basil Sugar Cookies

  Many years ago, after all of my siblings and I had grown up and moved out, I used to stop by my parents' house and visit with my Mom. Honestly, if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times,... someone should have followed my Mom and written down everything she ever said. I can't even begin to express the amount of Life Lessons we all learned from her, and of course, this blog wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for her. She was the best at cooking with what she had on hand, and she could feed an army just as easily as she could feed 2 people. Whenever I visited with her, we talked about loads of topics, but of course the conversation would inevitably work its way back to food or cooking or recipes or "how did you make this?" or "do we have that old recipe written down anywhere?" or some similar variation.
 Once I was fixing her a cup of tea, and I noticed that she had a little plate of sugar cookies in a container off to the side of the kitchen counter. I asked her about them and she said she liked to make them "whenever she wanted a little something sweet." She described them as being "nothing crazy, 'no bells and whistles', just good old fashioned sugar cookies" and they made a small enough batch that it didn't take her all afternoon to make them. "Perfect with a cup of tea."
 For some reason, that conversation always stuck with me. How can you go wrong with a good old fashioned sugar cookie whenever you want "a little something sweet", right?
 Cut to many years later, and I happen upon this recipe on a blog called Albiongould.com. I IMMEDIATELY think of Mom and those cookies that she had with her cup of tea. A classic sugar cookie, only this time with a little refreshing lemon and basil. I guess we can call that a few small bells and whistles, but still nothing crazy. The recipe description even says that it's perfect with a cup of tea. Sounds pretty awesome to me. And since I happen to have an ever-growing window box of basil, I decided to give it a hair cut and make these cookies. They're just exactly what you want them to be. Sweet, lemony, crispy, chewy, basil-y. Pretty sure Mom would have loved them.
 So the next time you want "a little something sweet" without too many "bells and whistles," fix yourself a cup of tea and try this recipe.
As Mom would say "It's one of Life's simple pleasures."




2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 cup butter
2 tsp lemon extract
zest of two lemons
4-6 basil leaves (about 2 tbs when finely chopped)


Heat oven to 375ºF.
Soften the butter in the microwave for about 1 1/2 minutes on low. If it melts a bit, that’s ok. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the egg. Add the lemon extract and lemon zest. Mix in the flour and baking powder. Combine everything. When a dough has formed, mix in the finely chopped basil. Form 1 inch balls of dough in your hands. Roll each ball in sugar. Put twelve on a half sheet pan. Push down in the middle of each ball a little with your thumb. Bake for 9-10 minutes.




Tips:
If you like the "green freshness" that the basil brings to these cookies, also try it with chopped fresh mint or fresh thyme leaves. They go very well with lemon, and it's amazing how well the fresh herbs go in a sweet recipe!