Snickerdoodles

When you're a kid, nothing can ever quite be good enough for you.  What I mean by that is that you may have the best stuff, but if it is different from everyone else's stuff, you aren't happy with what you have.  To be specific: there are lots of reasons to bring sweets to school (okay, well nowadays there is a ban on bringing sugary stuff but we used to have parties, birthdays, etc.!).  Whenever we needed to bring a treat, Dad would rush into the kitchen and whip up some snickerdoodles.  What other kid had a dad who could whip up snickerdoodles in the first place?!  Probably no one.  However, the other kids would bring in store-bought cookies with frosting and sprinkles, and my sisters and I would whine and complain that we had "boring" snickerdoodle cookies!  Now that I am not a bratty kid anymore, I realize how lucky I was to have the Snickerdoodle Daddy, and those amazing little cinnamon-sugary cookies.  So when I had to come up with something to bring to a baby shower at work, Mom reminded me of this story, and so snickerdoodles it was!

Pacman, or Snickerdoodle?!

I obviously used Dad's recipe, which was from an ancient copy of Betty Crocker's Baking Classics.  Okay I guess it isn't that ancient since there is an inscription that says "Tony we love you!  Happy birthday 4/9/87.  From Betsy, David and Jason. P.S. Bake us something!"  But how crazy is it to think of the Cormier family being only 3 people instead of 6?  :)  1987 is ancient if you think of it that way.   This particular page is so "loved" that it has fallen out of the book and is just tucked in there!  But it was a quick recipe to throw together - hence it being Dad's go-to cookie!  The recipe says it makes 6 dozen cookies, but somehow I got less.  Clearly I didn't make them as small as I was supposed to.  Either way, they were a big hit, both at the shower and at home, and it felt nice to make a recipe that my dad used to make for me <3

Recipe:

snickerdoodles

from Betty Crocker's Baking Classics, 1979

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening
2 eggs
2 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Topping:
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Instructions:

1) Heat oven to 400 degrees.   Mix 1 1/2 cups sugar, butter, shortening, and eggs.

2) Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

3) Shape dough by rounded teaspoonfuls into balls.  Mix 2 tablespoons sugar and the cinnamon; roll balls in mixture to coat.  Place about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake until set, 8-10 minutes.  Immediately remove from cookie sheet.