Snickedoodles

How is it already December 10th? My last post was about Thanksgiving! I always wonder how time flies but when I'm back at school the weeks take forever to end! So tonight I was taking pictures off my camera and realized how much baking I've done in the past two weeks. Apparently I was too busy baking to blog about it. But there is such fun holiday baking going on right now I want to share mine. I've had such a great time looking at the pictures everyone else has posted.

Last Saturday Brian left me for a whole six days to attend a MLB job fair in Orlando. Usually it's me leaving him home alone, so I always make him a treat before I go. But this time he was leaving me, but I wanted to make him a treat for his long plane ride. He had been talking about these snickerdoodles his mom use to make and she would roll them in candy canes for the holidays. So I emailed my mother in law, got her recipe and whipped up a batch for him to take on his trip.

Whole ball rolled in candy canes

Only the top with candy canes

This was the first time I'd made snickerdoodles, and do I dare admit that I'd never used cream of tartar for anything before? So that was new, but these turned out great. The only issue I had was actually rolling them in the crushed candy canes. The first batch I didn't spray the pan and I rolled the whole ball of dough in the crushed candy canes. That was bad news. Not only did the cookies stick, but the candy canes melted and then hardened on the pan. They tasted good, but they were definitely not pretty by the time I scraped them off the pan. I kept asking Brian if I was doing it right, but he said he hadn't had them since he was a kid, so I had to figure out a plan B. I decided to spray the pan with Pam, always a good move, I supposed I could have also used parchment paper, but I was out. And then my genius move was to only roll, or press the top of the cookie in the candy canes, therefore less melting and sticking on the bottom of the cookie. That worked like a champ. (For some reason I didn't take a picture of the finished product, sorry. I think the first ones were so ugly that I forgot!)

The next day I was attending a cookie exchange and decided to make regular snickerdoodles. Since this recipe was new to me I wanted to try out the original way. The recipe says to use one cup of shortening, but for my second batch I only had 1/2 a cup, so I did half shortening and half butter. I noticed that the dough was softer, but overall taste was the safe. So you can pick. Each batch made about three and a half dozen, which was great for me since I needed seven dozen for the exchange. These were great cookies, soft, and easy to make. As long as you know you need that cream of tartar stuff, you should have everything else on hand! Thank Kathleen for sharing another great recipe.

Snickerdoodles
1 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups flour

Cream shortening and sugar: add eggs and vanilla..  Add sifted dry ingredients gradually.  Roll into balls the size of a small walnut.  Roll in mixture of 2 Tablespoons sugar and 2 tsp. cinnamon.  Bake 8 to 10 minutes at 400 degrees until brown but soft.