Last for today... Snickerdoodles

Well, today was a big baking day...with zwieback, banana bread and finally, Snickerdoodle cookies. These are my 10 month old daughter's favorite cookies so I went on a hunt to find a recipe for them in my books. I have several recipes on my computer and there are lots on the Internet, but I had a hard time finding one in my cookbooks for some reason! Finally found one in the old standby The Joy of Cooking. If you don't have this one on your shelf, do yourself the favor of picking up a copy. It is definitely the "go to" for all your basic recipes and is full of great information on the hows and whys of cooking as well. Here's a link to a copy on Amazon if you would like your own:




The Recipe:


Snickerdoodles

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 large eggs

1/4 cup sugar

4 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease or line 2 cookie sheets. Whisk flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt until well blended. In a large bowl, beat butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar. Add eggs and beat until well combined. Stir in the flour mixture. In a separate bowl, combine cinnamon and remaining 1/4 cup sugar. Shape the dough into 1 1/4-inch balls, roll in the cinnamon sugar, and arrange about 2 3/4 inches apart on the cookie sheets. Bake, 1 sheet at a time, until the cookies are light golden brown at the edges, 12 to 14 minutes. Let stand briefly, then remove to a rack to cool. Yields thirty-six 3-inch cookies.



My Results:

For this recipe, I did not substitute any ingredients, however I did alter directions just a little bit. For instance, I beat the butter and sugar for a full two minutes to fully incorporate. I also refrigerated the dough before baking it, partially because the butter was so soft and partially because my little E woke up right as I finished mixing the dough. So I wrapped the dough in plastic wrap and stashed it in the fridge for about an hour while I played with her, then got back to making the cookies. Here are my ingredients:



And a photo of my dough, ready to be wrapped up for the fridge:



Here are the balls of dough ready for the oven. I used a 1 1/2-inch cookie scoop to make them uniform and even though the recipe says it only makes about 36, I got 47 cookies out of the dough, not counting a little bit of dough shrinkage ;)



Finally, here are the baked cookies, cooling for 5 minutes before being removed to the rack to finish cooling:



And of course I can't resist sharing a photo of the joy on my little E's face as she eats her first bite of homemade Snickerdoodles... I call it Snickerdoodlishous!




And that, my friends, is the end of day one of this year long journey! That last photo makes it all worth while... I hope you've enjoyed reading along with me and will give a try to some of these recipes. Tune in tomorrow for an adventure in Thailand...something from one of my Thai cookbooks!