Snickerdoodles

It snowed overnight, a good eight inches. School is cancelled, work inaccessible. Nothing to do but clear the driveway and the sidewalk. Maybe dig out the car. You’ve been working for a solid three or four hours. You see that the sweet elderly couple across the street is struggling to get out the door. You pull a kid away from the Playstation, grab an extra shovel, and you both head over to lend a hand, buying yourselves another two hours of work.

Your reward? They say thank you by inviting you in for a minute. The mister lets you in through the garage and you take your boots off at the kitchen door and he offers to hang up your coats. And then the smell hits. There’s fresh coffee and the Mrs. has been baking.

You take your seat at the table. Coffee is poured. Your kid doesn’t usually drink it but decided to act a little more grown up today and accepts a cup, taking a big slurp and burning themselves almost right away. You smile with pride. 

“I hope you like these, they’re my grandson’s favorite.” It’s a soft, warm butter cookie dusted with sugar and cinnamon. There’s a big plate of them on the table, and another plate on the counter.

“She can never just bake one batch. We’ll be eating them for the rest of the week,” the old man says.

Your hostess finds a zip top bag and filling it up with more cookies, and offers to send some home with you to share with the rest of your family.

Let's call them Gabe and Pippa.
They loathe each other.

You get them home and they’re still warm.

Ok, I know this is the fourth week of August, and it’s a little early for some dewey-eyed fantasy about kindly neighbors in cold weather.

The glamour of winter in the Midwest.

That said, this is the time of year to hone the skills you’ll want to use when the snow flies. Down time is not dead time.

We’re making Snickerdoodles today.

For your equipment you’ll need a bowl, a rubber headed scraper, some parchment paper, a baking sheet, and a disher.

A what?

A disher is also called an ice cream scoop. They come in many sizes, and I recommend the old #40, which holds 1 ½ tablespoons.

Our ingredients today are:

1 cup (two sticks) softened butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

These ingredients will be creamed together. If you’ve read the bar cookie recipe, you already know what that is. If you haven’t, here’s the quick version.

Using your rubber headed scraper, mix together the butter and sugar for a solid five minutes until the butter is light and creamy. Then add your eggs, one at a time, thoroughly creaming them in before adding the next. Once that’s done, add your vanilla and mix to combine.

Now we look to our dry ingredients.

2 3/4 cups flour

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp soda

1/4 tsp salt

Don’t have cream of tartar? You can replace it with one tablespoon of baking powder. The ratio, in general, is one and a half parts baking powder for one part cream of tartar.

Speaking only for myself, I’d pick up some cream of tartar. You might be making meringues some time, but that’s another day’s meditation.

Sift them together onto a paper plate, and add slowly to the creamed butter, and stop mixing when the flour disappears.

Go ahead and taste the dough, you know you want to. Yes, OK, raw eggs. Are they pasteurized? If they are you’re probably fine.

Find yourself a bowl, into which you will be putting three tablespoons of granulated sugar and three teaspoons of cinnamon.

With your disher, scoop up some dough, and drop it into the cinnamon mixture. Roll it around for even coating. Then put it on another paper plate. Once the plate is full, slide it into the fridge and let it chill.

Now, I can hear you saying, “I don’t have a disher scoopy thing.” I get it. Use a pair of spoons instead. Scoop up the dough with one, push it off with the other. Your sizes will be somewhat less consistent than if you used the disher, but what’s a little imperfection among friends, right?

If you’re a regular reader, then you’ll be familiar with my next trick. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, or 220 Celsius. We do this because when you put your cookies in the oven to bake, you’ll lose some heat. By heating the oven above the temperature you need, you’ll only be losing the excess.

While the oven warms up, put your dough balls onto a parchment covered baking sheet. Put them far enough apart so they don’t touch while they bake. Press the bottom of a glass or coffee mug onto the top of the dough balls to flatten them. Not too flat, though. You want them a good quarter inch or so tall.

By now the oven has warmed up. Turn the temp down to 400 (or 205 for our Metric friends) and bake for eight to ten minutes, turning the pan halfway around at the midpoint to ensure even baking.

Make the kids help. They'll be pestering you anyway.

What do you do if you like to have some dough handy? You never know when kindly neighbors are going to dig out your driveway, and it’s just nice to have something warm for them when they’re done.

You can wrap it up in a long piece of parchment. Form your dough into a log shape. Double wrap it nice and tight, twist the ends up like a candy wrapper, then double plastic wrap it for freezer storage. Should keep for about two weeks.

And that’s your classic snickerdoodle. Plenty of variations on the theme, you can add ginger and molasses to the dough and replace the cinnamon of the dredge with powdered ginger and you have yourself a gingerdoodle. Or use pumpkin spice. Lots of options. Experiment, enjoy!

Don’t put your knife in the dishwasher.