Snicker-doodle-do!

[Please forgive the formatting issues on this post] My favorite cookie will eternally be the soft, semi-baked blissfulness of a chocolate chip cookie straight from the oven.  That cookie’s too soft to remove from the cookie sheet, you say?  That’s ok, I’ll stand here in my kitchen & eat one with a spoon straight off of the cookie sheet until they set up a bit [true story].

However, the cookie that ties for #2 in my heart is a perfectly made snickerdoodle.* I think my affinity for the snickerdoodle comes from the fact that I rarely had it as a kid, mainly as a result of my love of chocolate-chippers per previously discussed. Snickerdoodles were something I only had at school, since you didn’t get a choice of cookie flavor, or on the rare lunch outing at Shapiro’s where my parents would let me pick out a cookie from the bakery after our meal.

But in my previous attempts at baking snickerdoodles, I have been unhappy with the results. They were too crunchy, too blah, or just didn’t live up to my standards of snickerdoodle’dom.  Last week in a recipe e-newsletter that I receive, it listed a user-submitted recipe for “Soft Snickerdoodles.”  I was intrigued. Maybe it was for my craving for sugar at that time, or maybe it was the back of my brain still feeling dejected from my prior snickerdoodle failures…but I pinned the recipe in my “recipes to try” board & sat on it for a few days.**

Enter the weekend—I had some time to kill while a batch of bourbon ice cream I was making for my husband was spinning…so I randomly decided that warm snickerdoodles could be a good dipping vessel for bourbon ice cream. Plus, I had all of the ingredients.

I made the recipe per instructed, minus the step about chilling the cookie sheet.  I didn’t do that step for a couple of reasons 1) I don’t have room in my fridge to randomly set a cookie sheet in it. I cook—I have ingredients & leftovers, it’s full.  2) It’s January & my kitchen island is made of stainless steel.  I could store meat on that thing & it would stay at a safe temperature.   The other small variation I had is that my cooking time ended up being about 2-3 minutes longer than the recipe instructs. My first attempt to “immediately remove from the baking sheet” per the instructions, resulted in a cookie falling straight through the cooling rack with a loud ‘plop.’*** But that could also be due to our cruddy, uneven heating oven.  If you were using a convection oven, or one that could consistently maintain a temperature, this might be a non-issue for you. 

Overall, I was pretty happy with the recipe. A few suggestions:

• Next time, I would make a half batch.  This recipe says it only makes 24 cookies, but my total estimated number would have been closer to 3-4 dozen w/ 1 inch balls of dough (had I made them all…I ended up reserving part of the dough to cook later, & then forgot to cook it the next day :-/).
•  I would also vary the spice level a bit. I used my “sweeter” cinnamon, instead of my “hotter” cinnamon, and I think in future attempts I would either use a combination of the two or solely the “hotter” cinnamon. I am also tempted to toss in a little dash of ground ginger & allspice in the next attempt.
• Next time I would use my stand mixer to make this dough. My stand mixer was occupied with spinning down the ice cream, so I attempted to mix with a spoonula. The dough is pretty stiff, & I finally had to use my hands to incorporate it all.  I don’t like getting my hands messy if I can help it…

Soft Snickerdoodles (submitted by Food.com user JuJu Bee)

Servings: “24” [see note above]

Prep time: 10 min. Wait time: 10 min. Cook time: 10-14 min [see note above]

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened (2 sticks)
• 2 eggs
• 1 ½  cups sugar
• 2 ¾ cups flour
• 2 t. cream of tartar
• 1 t. baking soda
• ¼ t. salt
• 3 T sugar
• 3 t. cinnamon

Ingredient Lineup

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. In a large bowl mix the butter, eggs & sugar together. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda & salt together. 

Flour mix on the left, butter mix on the right.

3. Gradually mix the flour mixture into the butter mixture (I do it in thirds)

I had to get my hands dirty :-/...next time I'm using the stand mixer

4. Chill dough & chill an ungreased cookie sheet in the fridge for 10-15 minutes.

5. In a small bowl, mix 3 T of sugar & cinnamon.

6. Scoop small balls of dough & roll them in the cinnamon mixture to evenly coat the whole ball (I use a melon-ball scoop for uniformity).

A melon ball scoop = uniform cookies

Next time, I'm making a half batch. Too much dough!

7. Place on chilled baking sheet & cook for 10 minutes (10-14 minutes)

8. Move from pan to cooling rack immediately.

Soft & Delicious

We had them with some half-set Bourbon Ice Cream

*My other tie for #2 favorite cookie will be made & discussed for a future blog entry…2 batches of cookies at 1 time in our house = bad idea.

**Hello Pinterest. I now understand why the logical, responsible side of my brain resisted you for so long. You are ‘e-crack’ of an extreme magnitude…and I love you & don’t know how I lived without you for so long.

***Dear Santa & Birthday Elves—I need these cooling racks for my birthday next year. Our wide-wire ones don’t cut it. You can check out my “kitchen stuff I want board”* for additional ideas.