Snickerdoodles

Olivia's wedding reception was a dessert buffet, and she asked if I'd make snickerdoodles for her. I said SURE!! Then I realized I'd never made them before. Never fear...there had to be a good recipe on the internet somewhere...right?

I hunted one down, made it...and four-cookies-consumed-in-ten-minutes later, declared it a good find. In fact...I made another batch this last week and took them to work. Friday afternoon, I got an email from one of the guys at work. The subject line said "alert!" - and I thought....oh no...what did I do? I opened the email. "Just wanted you to know we're out of snickerdoodles." I giggled right there in my seat!

So apparently these ARE really good. Make a batch and ENJOY.

The Recipe:
1 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a medium bowl, cream together the shortening and 1 1/2 cups sugar. Stir in the eggs. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture until well blended. In a small bowl, stir together the 2 tablespoons of sugar, and the cinnamon. Roll dough into walnut sized balls, then roll the balls in the cinnamon-sugar. Place them onto an ungreased cookie sheet, two inches apart. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Edges should be slightly brown. Remove from sheets to cool on wire racks.
I used the butter flavored Crisco shortening sticks. I dearly hate measuring shortening, so this makes it much easier. You'll also notice vanilla in this picture. There's no vanilla in the recipe. Guess I thought there should be! PAY ATTENTION, BEKAH!!

I cut up the shortening stick into small pieces and put it in the bowl with the sugar. (I sort of forgot to take a picture of it before I started beating it with the mixer...thrown off by the presence of the vanilla. Rough start. It got better.)
This is what it looks like after it's all mixed together. Kinda like scrambled eggs!

Added the eggs...

Then it started to resemble regular batter.

I put the rest of the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and and mixed it together.

I added the dry ingredients a little at a time.

I don't (yet) have a fancy pants KitchenAid mixer, so my little hand mixer only works in mixing the dry ingredients in for so long. It starts to look like this and then it gets too thick to use the beaters and I have to do the rest with a spoon.

This was the batter after all the flour was added...pretty thick.

I took a little bowl and put in the cinnamon and sugar.

Mixed them up.

Rolled the dough into small balls...you could make them bigger if you want big cookies.

They kind of look like doughnut holes after they're rolled in the cinnamon/sugar mixture.

Space them apart on the cookie sheet...

Bake and enjoy!

I'd recommend storing them with a slice of bread in the bag or dish with them...to keep them from getting crunchy. I forgot that the second time around. Woops! They really were so good!