Snickerdoodles

Snickerdoodles ready for packing
 into Christmas tin cans

One thing I do from time to time is look at the "freshly" baked goods in the grocery stores. One thing that caught my attention was the soft Snickerdoodles. It caught my attention because of its cute name (and I have read it several times on the packaging of some baking items), and it looked good.

The one I bought was almost like a cake in consistency, but in the shape of a thick cookie. The flavor was good. It was gone in two days (maybe 12 pieces).  But I resolved to check out the recipe for it, because I like knowing the ingredients (and not have to ingest all the chemicals I read listed on the packaging), and as always, nothing beats REALLY FRESHLY BAKED cookies.

Surprisingly, when I made this the first time at home, hubby was so eager to try it and apparently was not familiar with Snickerdoodles, although he also partook of the store-bought ones. The smell of the baking snickerdoodles was tantalizing, what with cinnamon as it's main flavor. And once he bit on the still chewy warm cookies, he said, "Oh! This is heavenly!" They also look inviting (reminds me of chocolate crinkles).

I made two batches so I could pack some for cookie swap with my in-laws, and still have some for our own consumption. I used the recipe from allrecipes.com, which gave me chewy on the inside, crunchy on the outside flat cookies that were not cake-like, which we liked better than the one I bought. This recipe is definitely a keeper, so it is filed here now in my kusina database.

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. Cream together butter, shortening, 1 1/2 cups sugar, the eggs and the vanilla. Blend in the flour, cream of tartar, soda and salt. Shape dough by rounded spoonfuls into balls (I used a medium cookie scoop).
3. Mix the 2 tablespoons sugar and the cinnamon. Roll balls of dough in mixture. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets.

Roll in the cinnamon-sugar mixture

I had to space them far apart, because they really spread out .

4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until set but not too hard. Remove immediately from baking sheets. (Since I used parchment paper, I let them cool down a bit until they won't bend as I transfer them from the cookie sheet to the cooling wire. Using the parchment paper lets me slide the whole thing off the hot pan, and allows for easy removal of the cooled cookies from the parchment paper to the cooling wire rack. I then wipe it clean to be reused for the next batches.  I baked each batch for exactly 8 minutes, so that the middle will be chewy.)

Very visually appealing!

Despite the fact that I received Christmas goodies from my in-laws and that my family had some of the freshly baked ones, the snickerdoodles I left in the cookie jar were gone in 3 days. This will be a different cookie to donate in games hosted in our local schools where my sons study, which I am sure will be a big hit.