One of my favorite things to do with Olivia and Sophia is to bake cookies. It is probably the messiest project we take on (aside from finger painting), but they get such a kick out of being able to eat their creations, that I can’t refuse a request to bake.
Every time Olivia finds out our afternoon activity is baking, she runs to her room and proclaims: “I need my chef’s hat and my apron, so I can be a chef!” Both girls have hats and aprons, and they wear them every time–it’s adorable.
This time, I decided to try my hand at Snickerdoodles. I’ve never made them before. Since I had no chocolate chips in the house, and we had JUST made sugar cookies with royal icing, I thought this would be an easy cookie to make.
Plus it would be an awesome way to break in my new beautiful early Christmas present from my Mother-in-Law:
Isn't it BEEEUUUTEEEFUL?
I searched for a good recipe, and came across the Perfect Snickerdoodles recipe. It had good reviews, so I decided to give it a try. Of course, I changed it up (that’s just what I do, okay?) and did half butter/half shortening and used baking powder instead of the cream of tartar and baking soda (thank you Alton Brown!) because I didn’t have any cream of tartar.
I allowed it to sit in the fridge for a few days because…well, because I was lazy (and no, I didn’t promise the girls we were making the cookies that day–I try to always follow through on promises of cookie baking). But when we finally got around to making the cookies, the dough looked like this:
MMM...cookie dough.
So I started rolling the dough into balls. No exact measurement, just good sized balls of dough.
Balls of dough. Nothing exciting.
At this point I had been handing some of the balls to the girls and they were rolling (or, in Sophia’s case, destroying) them into a tiny bowl of cinnamon sugar. This is why some of the dough balls look like they have cinnamon sugar on them–Olivia got handsy with the dough balls.
After lots of rolling in a cinnamon sugar mixture, I put them on a baking sheet and did something I won’t do again.
I squashed the balls.
DON'T try this at home.
The recipe doesn’t tell you to smoosh them down, but in my infinite wisdom, I assumed that you would need to. Olivia kept asking me “Why are you pushing them down, mama? Why do they need to be smooshed?” And I kept saying “Well, I want them to cook all the way through, sweetie.”
I should have listened to Olivia.
Yours should look like the last one...not all the other ones.
I regret that I did not take photos of the finished product. They were delicious. Had I not smooshed them down, they would have probably been much softer, but even as crispy cookies, they were yummy. A lot like a cookie version of a churro.
Mmmm churros.
A huge mess was made, but it was totally worth it to hear Olivia call them “SNEAKERDOODLES” and then have Sophia call them “snick dooles” (and later “snick-er…..doodle”).