cookie

Photo from Lovin’ From the Oven

This month’s UA Culinary Corner recipe comes from yours truly! It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that it’s a cookie recipe. It is my pleasure to present to you the PERFECT snickerdoodle recipe. I’ve brought these to the office many times and they’re always a big hit. In fact, word of my snickerdoodles traveled to Financial Services and John Cebula challenged me to a snickerdoodle bake-off (which has yet to happen). Good luck, buddy. You’re going to need it.

Snickerdoodles are one of my absolute favorite cookies but for a long time I couldn’t get them just the way I wanted. I tried a lot of different recipes but they weren’t soft enough, they lacked flavor or they spread out too much. Finally the day came when I knew I had found THE recipe: Even Better Snickerdoodles from the blog Lovin’ From the Oven. Read on, intrepid bakers, and these exquisite cookies shall be yours for the eating. Let me know if you make them. I’d love to know how they turned out.

Happy baking, friends!

An Even Better Snickerdoodle
Adapted from Lovin’ From the Oven

Ingredients 

  • 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened*
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/3 cup brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 teaspoon double strength vanilla**
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
  1. Cream together the softened butter and sugars with a stand mixer or an electric hand mixer.
  2. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth.
  3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
  4. Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, working in batches so it doesn’t fly out everywhere.
  5. Scrape down the bowl (to make one big dough lump) and let the dough chill in the refrigerator for 30 – 60 minutes. This is an important step because it makes it much easier to form into balls and it prevents your cookies from spreading out too much while they bake.
  6. Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. (I know it seems like a low temperature but just trust me.)
  7. In a shallow bowl or baking dish, combine 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. I like to use a pie pan for this step.
  8. After the dough has chilled, roll it into balls about 2″ in diameter. Making all your dough balls consistent in size and uniform in roundness makes for perfect bakery-worthy cookies.
  9. Roll each ball in the cinnamon/sugar mixture and place them about 3″ apart from each other on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Don’t cram them onto the cookie sheet or they will form one giant blog of snickerdoodle which would be delicious but not very pretty to look at. Do NOT skip the parchment paper. This is what keeps your cookies from getting brown and crispy on the bottom. And as an added bonus, you won’t have to wash your cookie sheet.
  10. Bake the cookies for 12-14 minutes. They will look undercooked and puffy. If they look perfectly done right when you take them out, they’re overbaked and will be crispy. The cookies will continue baking a bit on the hot cookie sheet and will fall into a beautiful crinkle when they have cooled. I don’t suggest eating these warm from the oven as they would be pretty mushy.
  11. Let them cool and then EAT ALL OF THEM AND DON’T SHARE WITH ANYONE.

*Don’t melt your butter, it will change the texture of the cookies. You can tell if you’ve got perfectly softened butter if there’s no liquid butter anywhere on it and it easily leaves an indentation when you poke it.

**Double strength vanilla isn’t a requirement, but I think it makes a big difference. I use this in everything that calls for vanilla.