snickerdoodle dandy

We continue our celebration of autumn with one of my favorite spices for this time of year: cinnamon.  My favorite (and most frequent) way to have it is sprinkled in my coffee in the mornings.  My second favorite way to have cinnamon?  In snickerdoodles, of course!  Snickerdoodles are essentially sugar cookies that happen to be infatuated with cinnamon. Dee-licious.  Especially with tea (we'll get to that later).  Snickerdoodles are the treasured antiques of the cookie world, so recipes are pretty similar and often use cream of tartar.  I used this recipe (that doesn't have cream of tartar, so consider it a "refinished antique") as a guide, tweaking it a bit to up that divine cinnamon content.  I also halved the recipe because, though I adore these fragrant cookies, 4-5 dozen of them is just excessive.  Let's get started:

 Take one stick of room temperature (or softened in the microwave for 10 seconds) butter and 3/4 cup (150 grams) of sugar...

 and cream together in an electric mixer for 3 minutes or so, until light and fluffy.  Add in one egg and one teaspoon of vanilla, mixing well.

Now, let's get our dry ingredients workin'.  I whisked together 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon...

1 teaspoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt...

and 1 1/3 cup (130 grams) of flour.

Stir the dry ingredients into the butter and sugar mixture, in two batches.

Now, it's cinnamon sugar time!  Stir together about 1/3 cup of sugar and 1 teaspoon (or as much as you like) of cinnamon in a shallow bowl or dish.

Roll your cookie dough into 1 inch round balls and roll them around in the cinnamon sugar, until well-coated.

 Place on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.

Now, you have two options.  First option: If you like snickerdoodles flat like little teacakes, then use a glass and flatten out those little balls of dough into 1/2 inch disks.

 Bake at 400ºF/190ºC for 8-10 minutes.

 They turn out like this.  Lovely!

Your second option is to not flatten them out and let them puff up as they bake, which is now my favorite method.  They turn out golden, crunchy from the cinnamon-sugar coating and soft in the middle.

 So make yourself a cup of tea (with milk of course).

And enjoy these sumptuous snickerdoodles.  Happy fall, y'all!

Bon appetit,

lilrevchef