Grown Up Snickerdoodles

Snickerdoodles -cinnamon and sugar in a crispy-crusted, cakey-centered cookie of dreams. The simplicity of this cookie makes it the delicious, warming, comforting treat for many since it is so easy to make!

I must share some background to baking this cookie - a story of failure and of creation, leading ultimately to palette bliss.

The day before baking this cookie, I tried a different recipe that was seriously off in the ingredient department - or perhaps I did something wrong...a possibility I struggle to accept because I bake all the time and to fail at an "easy as pie" cookie recipe is really upsetting to my ego. Anyway - round one of snickerdoodles = fail. Luckily, though the cookies looked like pancakes of doom, they tasted pretty darn good! Frank finished them by the time I started the second batch of snickerdoodles a day later.

In discussing snickerdoodles, some how the topic of POP TARTS came up. I mentioned how snickerdoodles are rather similar in flavor to cinnamon sugar POP TARTS, they just lack the oober sweet icing on top. So, with a couple of minutes of brainstorming, I decided (with Frank's help, of course!) to dip the base of this new batch of snickerdoodles in rum icing - for a more "grown up" approach to the POP TART. (I should mention that if I had to live off of POP TARTS for as long as humanly possible before dying of malnutrition, I could probably do it. I love POP TARTS.)

This recipe is adapted from the sugar cookie recipe on page 771 in "The New Best Recipes" cookbook. Obviously additions were made, which I will reflect below:

Grown Up Snickerdoodles:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
  
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• cinnamon and sugar for rolling

Instructions:
Preheat the over to 375 degrees and prep two sheet pans with parchment paper lining, or with pan spray. Combine all of the dry ingredients (excluding the sugars). In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugars. Add the egg and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients in two stages and stir until all ingredients are fully incorporated. Place the bowl of dough in the refrigerator, covered, for about 25 minutes to chill the dough. In the mean time, combine about 1/2 cup of sugar and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon to roll the dough in. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and scoop tablespoonfuls into the cinnamon/sugar combo and fully coat with sugar. Place the dough balls onto the prepped sheet pans and use the base of a glass to gently mash down the dome of the dough. Bake until the bottoms of the cookies are slightly golden. Allow to rest on the sheet pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Once cooled, dip in rum icing and let it set before eating. (Rum Icing recipe to follow.)

This is the dough just before chilling it:

Oooo! Cinnamon and sugar!

This is my "dough coating station" - I scooped from the bowl, dropped that into the cinnamon and sugar and then panned it!

Coating the cookies in cinnamon and sugar:

Dough blobs on the pan:

I used the base of a wine glass to mash the tops of the dough down:


Notes:
It really doesn't matter if the pans are lined with parchment or sprayed with pan spray - I just prefer to keep my pans clean and reduce my dish-washing load. Rolling the dough in sugar creates that nice crispy outside from the sugar caramelizing during the baking process. If you do not mash the tops of the dough-balls down, the cookie will be really gooey in the middle and almost over-baked along the edges, mashing it down creates a more even baking surface.

The cookies just out of the oven. I decided there wasn't enough sugar on top so I sprinkled some more on. :-)


Rum Icing:

• 1 cup powdered (plus extra for thickening)
• Rum (enough to thin out the sugar)

Instructions:
Combine the two ingredients and add a little rum at a time to achieve a "dipping consistency". Dip the base of the cookie into the glaze. Allow to set/harden before eating.

This is a shot of the cookies just after being dipped into the icing - yummy!


These are tasty little treats! The rum flavor is very prominent in the icing, and since it is on the base of the cookies, it is the first flavor to hit the tongue when biting into them! The cookie itself is very cakey inside and the cinnamon makes the flavor so warm and comforting! These really do have a cinnamon/sugar POP TART flavor to them, and the icing helps to bring it together in an adult-flavor sort of way. :-)