Sparkling sugar, sometimes called white crystal sugar, gives these basic cookies a professional look.
My favorite neighbor called the other day to say that she’d left a small gift outside my door. There I found a pint of true Mexican vanilla topped with a tiny red bow. Like so many other things, vanilla has become hellishly expensive in the last year or two, so this indeed looked like a treasure.
The bottle was labeled “pure vanilla,” but I’m not sure I’m comfortable using it. There’s a secret about some Mexican vanillas: Many are stretched with tonka bean extract, which contains coumarin. The U.S.Department of Agriculture, which regulates food ingredients, has outlawed coumarin in the United States since the 1950s because it is toxic, and especially harmful to the liver.
There’s a little bit of a backstory behind Mexican vanilla. Until the late 1800s, Mexico had a virtual monopoly on vanilla, which was mostly grown in the states that border the Gulf of Mexico. It was famous the world over for its ultra-high-quality vanilla. Then the French began to grow vanilla — which are the seed pods of an orchid called vanilla planifolia — in their colonies in Madagascar and elsewhere, challenging Mexico’s dominance of the vanilla market.
Then, when the Mexican Revolution started in the early 20th century, vanilla production was shuttered for many years. After the revolution, oil companies moved into the region, and they stripped the forests. Though vanilla production in Mexico fell dramatically, the country maintained its reputation for excellence.
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