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Thursday, December 6, 2012

12 Days of Christmas Baking - Day 1 Soft & Chewy Snickerdoodles

As we all know, Christmas is fast approaching, which means many of us have started decking the house, hitting the stores, wrapping the presents and best of all, baking! I haven't started decorating yet, and I just kicked off the shopping yesterday. The baking? Would you believe I haven't started going crazy with that yet either?

Even if I haven't kicked off my holiday baking frenzy yet, and believe me, it will be a frenzy like it is every year, I am kicking off my 12 Days of Christmas Baking. I will share with you all the wonderful cookies I bake in an effort to plump up my loved ones each Christmas. And, even though it's not a sweet recipe Christmas just wouldn't be the same around my house if I didn't bake atleast one batch of my yummy Sausage Balls, so you can expect to find that recipe too! You can expect to find a candy recipe or two mixed in there as well, because Christmas just wouldn't be the same without whipping up some kind of yummy candies to give away right?

I thought I'd kick things off with some yummy snickerdoodles. They are great anytime of year, but the cinnamon sugar thing makes me think of Christmas, and if you are giving cookies away, you can seldom go wrong with snickerdoodles.

I'm a sucker for a good cookie, and I'm always craving the adventure of a new recipe. I remember eating snickerdoodles as a kid, but my experience with them was minimal. For whatever reason, they just weren't a cookie we had around my house. I remember them as buttery, soft and chewy with a wonderful crispness on the outside from the cinnamon sugar they are rolled in before going in the oven. Since there was no tried and true recipe passed down through my family I decided to dig around the web and look for one with good reviews. Before my addiction to Pinterest I used allrecipes.com a good bit, and I've seen"Mrs. Sigg's Snickerdoodles" over and over on allrecipes. When I see a recipe with a high rating from a huge number of people I figure it's probably pretty good and worth giving a try.

Since first trying these it's not a recipe I've made dozens of times..yet! But, overall I've been pretty happy with these snickerdoodles, they have a nice flavor, but aren't as buttery as I would like, so I'll have to work on that. I made an adjustment to the cinnamon sugar mixture from that in the original recipe. The first go round with these it looked like there wasn't nearly enough sugar so I doubled the amount and found that was perfect for me. I also refrigerate the dough for about 30 minutes before prepping it for the oven.

Soft & Chewy Snickerdoodles

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).

Cream together butter, shortening, 1 1/2 cups sugar, the eggs and the vanilla. Blend in the flour, cream of tartar, soda and salt. Shape dough by rounded spoonfuls into balls.

Mix the 3 tablespoons sugar and the cinnamon. Roll balls of dough in mixture. Place
2 inches apart on ungreased or parchment lined baking sheets.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until set but not too hard. Remove immediately from baking sheets to cooling rack.

Makes approximately 48 cookies

3 comments:

Yum! I'm doing 12 Days of Christmas Cookies, too! I also have a blog hop attached, so feel free to come link up some of your favorites!

hi, noticed you said you didn't find them buttery enough, i swapped shortening for margarine to get the little bit of extra buttery flavor. excellent recipe. a favorite of my family for sure!

Hi Anonymous, thanks for the feedback and glad to know you love the recipe! I have thought of doing all butter, but in eliminating the shortening you lose some of that soft chewiness after a short period of time, which is why I haven't tried that route. I think adding a bit of butter flavored extract or butter flavored shortening in place of plain shortening would boost the butter flavor while still keeping the softness. I'll have to try that and your method to compare and give an update. Thanks for stopping by, hope you'll come back again soon!

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