UK readers, have you heard of Snickerdoodles before? Despite visiting the US multiple times throughout my life, I’ve heard the term but I had no idea what a snickerdoodle was – I’d always assumed it was some kind of nutty, chocolatey treat, thanks to the “Snickers” part of the name. But I was wrong!
One of my favourite vloggers, Blair Lamb, has recently done a Christmas Cookie week on her channel, and one of the cookies she baked was snickerdoodles – see her video here. Before watching the videos, we were pretty happy with the cookie recipes we have in our repertoire already. But when we heard about snickerdoodle cookies, a chewy vanilla cookie with a crisp exterior coated in a sweet cinnamon sugar – we thought we’d give it a go.
And, oh my goodness! Let’s make this an English thing too PLEASE.
Snickerdoodle cookies are wonderful. They’re the perfect combination of soft, melt-in-the-mouth goodness that’s slightly cakier than we’d normally expect from a cookie in the UK and sweet, chewy magic. The scent of these cooking is just divine. I’ve always claimed not to be a fan of cinnamon, however I think I need to change my stance on that: I absolutely adore the smell and flavour of these (plus I love churros, apple cake with cinnamon and puttanesca pasta with a pinch of cinnamon).These snickerdoodle cookies give you that warm festive Christmas smell floating throughout the house without even lighting a candle, plus the smell lasts even longer too. And on top of that, you get to eat them afterwards!
These cookies also look super pretty with their cracked top appearance and browned outer crunch made possible by the mixture of cinnamon and sugar the dough is dipped in. They would make a lovely Christmas gift wrapped up in paper or in a tin. In fact, we shared them with my grandparents this weekend and they went down an absolute treat with my grandad!
As this is an American cookie tradition that hasn’t really reached the UK yet, all the recipes for snickerdoodles were in US measurements with some ingredients that you might not expect to see in an English cookie recipe.
For example, the recipe we based this on used a combination of bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar. We spoke to my dad who mentioned that this is really just what baking powder is made up of – so even though you can easily get both ingredients in the UK, baking powder is an easier alternative to get it one.
The other slightly different twist we noted here was that the recipe says to use vegetable shortening. This isn’t something we’d ever had in the house so we had to do a bit of searching to figure out where we were going to buy it. Fortunately, it’s not all that strange of an ingredient! We bought the Trex brand from Morrisons, however apparently you could also just use margarine or baking spread – these just have a slightly higher water content.
Without further ado, the UK Snickerdoodle cookie recipe!
Snickerdoodle Cookie Recipe
Ingredients
- 0.5 cup butter
- 0.5 cup vegetable shortening Trex, Flora White, Cookeen in the UK
- 1.5 cups caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2.75 cups plain flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 0.25 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp caster sugar
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 200C (180C fan)
- Cream together the softened butter, vegetable shortening, sugar, eggs and vanilla extract until white.
- Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt. Be careful not to overmix your flour.
- Shape the dough into spheres, approximately 1 tbsp per cookie.
- Mix the remaining 2 tbsp of sugar with the cinnamon, then roll each ball of dough int his until they’re evenly coated. Place each ball well spaced on ungreased baking sheets.
- Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, then remove immediately from baking sheets and place onto cooling rack. Enjoy!
Let me know if you try this Snickerdoodle cookie recipe and what you think!
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This post originally appeared at Rebel Angel.
