Snickerdoodles
meh.
Up until now, I have not been impressed. I mean, what’s going on here? Aren’t you just a sugar cookie with a coat of cinnamon-sugar instead of an icing jacket? A bit more free formed than what the typical cookie cutter could do? If you’re just a sugar cookie, then say so. You even have “snicker” in your name. How am I supposed to take a cookie seriously that is asking to be laughed at?
Clearly, snickerdoodles have not been high on my priority list of cookies during my lifetime. I don’t love them. I don’t even enjoy them. To me, they fall into that category of “yucky cookies.” These are the cookies you’ll eat, but only after all the other types of cookies are gone. Of course, I eat snickerdoodles. They’re still a cookie, aren’t they?
But I haven’t really given them a fair chance. I’m pretty sure I’ve never made them before. Ever. And most of the snickerdoodles I have tried have been the perfectly formed, cakey, supermarket cookies that people who don’t bake (or have time to bake, to be fair) bring to a potluck. Yeah, they were the last ones on the dessert table or I wouldn’t have even tried them.
So it was time that I take snickerdoodles into my own hands and find out what’s really going on. The first thing I did was Google a recipe. When I came upon The Best Snickerdoodle Cookie Recipe from Modernhoney.com, I obviously needed to go no further. If there were a snickerdoodle to win me over, it must be “the best” one right?
I will admit, as I read through the list of ingredients and visualized what I had in my cupboard, I was surprised by one ingredient in particular. Cream of Tartar.
You and I may have different experiences with cream of tartar, but I am most familiar with it as the white powder that gets added to egg whites when making meringue. In that case it prevents the formation of sugar crystals and helps the stiff peaks form.
Interestingly, it also has a lot of other uses, as pointed out in Healthline. This includes relieving migraines and help in quitting smoking. It can also be used as a cleaning agent and serves other purposes in baking. Because it is acidic, when mixed with baking soda, it causes the formation of carbonic acid, which is a leavening agent. That is what it’s doing in the snickerdoodles. Apparently cream of tartar also provides a bit of tang to the flavor of the cookie. Who knew?
Ok, maybe you did.
Wait, it gets better. Did you know that cream of tartar comes from wine? Potassium bitartrate is the salt of L-tartaric acid, which is naturally present in wine. When wine is fermented, the potassium bitartrate crystallizes and forms deposits on the bottom of wine casks. This is cream of tartar.
This is fascinating. All of the other ingredients are regular cookie things, but this has really opened my mind to snickerdoodles. I have the dough chilling in the fridge as I write this and now I can’t wait to see how they turn out.
Here. You read the reduced recipe for two cookies and how I made it happen while I go bake them.
ingredients
18g soft butter
24g sugar
8g egg
0.75g vanilla
26.4g all-purpose flour
0.36g cream of tartar
0.72g baking soda
0.45g salt
topping
4g sugar
0.94g cinnamon
directions
Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. This is something I do with a wood spoon. I just smoosh the butter and sugar together with the back of the spoon until it looks like it’s been creamed. It works.
Add the egg and vanilla and cream it together some more. You get the idea.
Stir in the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt until just combined.
In a small separate bowl, mix the sugar and cinnamon for the topping.
Refrigerate the dough for at least 20 minutes until whenever you’re ready to use it.
When you’re ready, preheat the over to 3500F
Make two rounded balls of dough and roll each in the cinnamon-sugar mixture…TWICE. Make sure to get each dough ball good and coated.
Place them on a parchment lined cookie sheet and press down on the middle slightly.
Bake for 9 to 11 minutes.
Let them cool on the cookie sheet at least until set, then you can eat them warm. Or, I suppose you could move them to a cooling rack.
If you’ve read this far, you’ve seen the pictures showing how they turned out. They’re adorable. They are crackled and sugary and inviting and when they were finally cool enough to take a bite? Well, let’s just say I’d like to apologize to snickerdoodles for not having believed in you sooner. You are without a doubt, not a typical sugar cookie.
