Snickerdoodle (ATK)

• servings: 24 cookies
• active time: 10-12 minutes
• total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

2½ cups (12½ ounces) all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

8 tablespoons vegetable shortening

1½ cups (10½ ounces) sugar, plus ¼ cup for rolling

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Directions

1 Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt together in bowl.

2 Using stand mixer fitted with paddle, beat butter, shortening, and 1½ cups sugar on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds, scraping down bowl as needed. Reduce speed to low and slowly add flour mixture until combined, about 30 seconds. Give dough final stir by hand to ensure that no flour pockets remain.

3 Combine remaining ¼ cup sugar and cinnamon in shallow dish. Working with 2 tablespoons dough at a time, roll into balls, then roll in sugar to coat; space 2 inches apart on 112 prepared baking sheets. (Dough balls can be frozen for up to 1 month; bake frozen dough balls in 300-degree oven for 18 to 20 minutes.) 4 Bake cookies, 1 sheet at a time, until edges are just set and beginning to brown but centers are still soft, puffy, and cracked (cookies will look raw between cracks and seem underdone), 10 to 12 minutes, rotating sheet halfway through baking. Let cookies cool on sheet for 10 minutes, then transfer to wire rack. Let cookies cool completely before serving.

Notes

Why This Recipe Works With their crinkly tops, slightly tangy flavor, and liberal coating of cinnamon sugar, chewy snickerdoodles are a New England favorite. We quickly determined that an oft-included ingredient, cream of tartar, is essential to these cookies. Not only is it responsible for their characteristic subtle tang, but, when combined with baking soda, it creates a short-lived leavening effect that causes the cookies to rise and fall quickly while baking, leaving them with a distinctive crinkly appearance. Some traditional snickerdoodle recipes contain vegetable shortening, and with good reason: Unlike butter, shortening contains no water, so cookies made with shortening tend to hold their shape rather than spread out. We found that using equal amounts of shortening and butter gave us the best of both worlds—thick, nicely shaped cookies that were chewy and rich-tasting. The final step was rolling the balls of dough in the traditional cinnamon sugar. For the best results, bake the cookies one sheet at a time and pull them from the oven just as they are beginning to brown but are still soft and puffy in the middle. They will continue to cook as they cool on the baking sheet.

Essential Snickerdoodle Ingredients Snickerdoodles are known for their subtle tang and spiced sugar coating. Two other defining features are the crinkled top and soft interior. To make sure these cookies are authentically crinkled and soft, most recipes rely on a combination of cream of tartar and baking soda. Cream of tartar is an acidic powder that acts as a flavoring agent, providing the characteristic tanginess to the cookies. When alkaline baking soda meets up with acidic cream of tartar, carbon and oxygen combine to form carbon dioxide. This in turn causes the cookie to rise and then collapse, a process that results in a crinkly top and cakey texture. The combination of the two is generally called for in recipes in which none of the other ingredients is acidic.