I had the day off on Tuesday, because it's been a long time since I've taken a day off to get stuff done that didn't necessarily involve being at home. Seeing as I was going to be out in the afternoon, I figured I might be able to throw together at least the dough for a batch of cookies or something, because it wouldn't be me if I didn't at least have a go at baking something when I'm not at work, right? This recipe happened to be from the cookie-a-day calendar I've got sitting on my desk at work - it took til July 10th before I found a recipe that caught my eye enough to tear it out to take home ... not sure what that says about either my taste in recipes, or the kinds of recipes in the calendar! I have previously had no experience with the world of snickerdoodles, so I went a-googling and hit the wikipedia page on snickerdoodles, which suggests a few origins for the name, some of which involve snails, or possibly just fanciful naming by the recipe originators. I had some concerns about the ratio of flour to butter, which ended up making quite a sticky and melty dough that needed to be rolled into balls rather quickly if you had warm hands like I did (seeing as I'd just done the dishes before I started with getting the cookies baked), and the recipe did warn that the dough will spread, but even given this, I underestimated just how much spreading would happen - the first tray came out as one giant cookie! And that was a rather long run-on sentence!
Snickerdoodles
Adapted from recipe from "500 Cookies", published by Sellers Publishing, Inc
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Preheat the oven to 180°C. Into a bowl, sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon of ground ginger, and 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, then add the salt. In your mixing bowl, cream the butter and 170g of sugar until fluffy. Add the egg and beat well to combine. Pour in the flour mixture and mix this until you get a smooth paste. Wrap this paste as a tube in some baking paper, and stick it in the fridge for about half an hour, or until it is firm ***.
In a shallow bowl or saucer, mix together the remaining cinnamon and caster sugar. Get the dough out of the fridge, and form the dough into small balls. Roll the dough balls in the cinnamon sugar mixture.
Place the balls on a baking tray lined with baking paper, at least 7cm apart - these things spread like crazy. Flatten each ball slightly with a fork ****. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are brown and the centres are starting to colour. Cool on the tray for 5 minutes.
Apparently, these things will keep in an airtight container for up to 5 days. I'm yet to be able to prove this. I got ... 48 cookies from this dough, I don't think I could've lived with cookies double the size because the original recipe stated that there was enough to make 24.
* Original recipe specified only 1 teaspoon of cinnamon in total. I am crazy, and like cinnamon.
** Original recipe didn't have ginger. See above * comment (:
*** I left the dough in the fridge til the next night. It seemed to cope OK - no weird fridge funk odours to pick up or anything!
**** I didn't bother flattening, because I wasn't reading the recipe by the time I got to this point - it was probably half an hour past the time I wanted to get to sleep, and I was getting a bit annoyed at the melty-sticky dough. I might not have thought these things if I'd had more sleep *grin*
Adapted from recipe from "500 Cookies", published by Sellers Publishing, Inc
.
- 170g plain flour
- 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon *
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger **
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 225g unsalted butter
- 170g caster sugar, plus 2 tablespoons caster sugar
- 1 egg
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Into a bowl, sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon of ground ginger, and 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, then add the salt. In your mixing bowl, cream the butter and 170g of sugar until fluffy. Add the egg and beat well to combine. Pour in the flour mixture and mix this until you get a smooth paste. Wrap this paste as a tube in some baking paper, and stick it in the fridge for about half an hour, or until it is firm ***.
In a shallow bowl or saucer, mix together the remaining cinnamon and caster sugar. Get the dough out of the fridge, and form the dough into small balls. Roll the dough balls in the cinnamon sugar mixture.
Place the balls on a baking tray lined with baking paper, at least 7cm apart - these things spread like crazy. Flatten each ball slightly with a fork ****. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges are brown and the centres are starting to colour. Cool on the tray for 5 minutes.
Apparently, these things will keep in an airtight container for up to 5 days. I'm yet to be able to prove this. I got ... 48 cookies from this dough, I don't think I could've lived with cookies double the size because the original recipe stated that there was enough to make 24.
* Original recipe specified only 1 teaspoon of cinnamon in total. I am crazy, and like cinnamon.
** Original recipe didn't have ginger. See above * comment (:
*** I left the dough in the fridge til the next night. It seemed to cope OK - no weird fridge funk odours to pick up or anything!
**** I didn't bother flattening, because I wasn't reading the recipe by the time I got to this point - it was probably half an hour past the time I wanted to get to sleep, and I was getting a bit annoyed at the melty-sticky dough. I might not have thought these things if I'd had more sleep *grin*
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