Snickerdoodles

Wow, can't believe I haven't updated since September. For the record, I have been cooking things, but they were simple and didn't result in epic failures. Some were even down-right tasty. Perhaps this will eventually morph into a REAL cooking blog......eventually.

So I got it into my head to make Snickerdoodles. The boy had never had them, and I was in a cookie mood. I thought they were just sugar cookies with cinnamon, but apparently the secret yet crucial ingredient for them is "Cream de Tartar" which is a powder that comes from the inside of wine barrels and acts as a leavening agent and keeps sugar from crystallizing.

The internet insisted it's not "real" Snickerdoodles without it, so I shelled out $4 for a thing of it (To which my mother later told me I could have just bummed 2 tsps from a "real" cook) So I'll be making a lot of Snickerdoodles and merginue pie to get my money's worth.

I was also excited to use the Kitchen-Aid mixer my mom got me as a moving present. I've kind of been afraid of it because when I'd use my Mom's as a kid, I'd always put the setting too high and the food would go FLYING. So I'm sticking with level 1 to be safe.

So it was a pretty straightforward recipe. I decided to use "Joy of Cooking" since the internet had WAY too many variations. Whisked the dry ingredients together, creamed the sugar and butter before adding dry ingredients to the mixer. 

BUT THEN....the recipe said "combine 1/4 sugar and 4tsps cinnamon". I thought this was quite odd since I'd already added plenty of sugar. But I was tired so I tossed them in too.

If the recipe says so....

 So I take the mix and start making the balls.....at which point the recipe says to roll the balls in the sugar cinnamon mix. WTF?! It had said to combine all the ingredients....I think it was a reasonable assumption to think the last thing listed with "combine" was going to go in too. Cinnamon is pretty potent so I decided to skip putting in more and just bake them as is.  The cinnamon was already in them, how bad could it be?.....It also said to make the balls 1.25" inches and place them 2.5" apart, which I felt confident was a general suggestion.

FEAR MY GIANT BALLS!

All of this resulted in what I like to refer to as "Snicker-whoopsie-doodle"

They were dry as a hot sidewalk and about as hard, even though I slightly undercooked them. To be fair, they weren't horrible TASTING. I mean, let them soak in milk or something and you'd have a yummy mush.

 I texted a picture to the boy, at which point he excitedly responded "MEGA COOKIE!". Men.

Joy of Cooking is now on my shit list......though to be fair I should have read the entire recipe first.

What I probably looked like when I took the cookies out

So I swore vengence and started from scratch to make another batch, making sure to ROLL the cookies in the cinnamon/sugar mix. I was also sure to, you know, make them small enough so they wouldn't merge into a MEGA-COOKIE.

The result? Much better.

They're much softer (still a little crispy) and taste much better. I feel vindicated.....but I can't bring myself to throw the first batch out. Perhaps an interpretative art piece? Or I could market them as heating stones for reptile tanks

 

Either way, I'm sure the reaction of the boy will be this: