Putting my own spin on an old favorite

This weekend I wanted to BAKE! I love to bake, but I don't want all the products sitting around the house -- we eat them. But I felt like I needed to make some cookies for neighbors who helped out during the snows of the holidays.

I didn't want to make the same-old, same-old. I wanted to put my own spin on the cookies. So I decided to make special snickerdoodles!

Snickerdoodles

Cookie dough:
3 eggs at room temperature
2 1/4 cups of white sugar
4 sticks of butter, at just below room temp and cut into 1/2 cubes
1 tablespoon of cream of tartar
1 teaspoon of salt
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
4 cups of unbleached flour

Crust
1/2 cup of dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon

Cream the butter and white sugar together until fluffy. Add eggs and continue creaming until well mixed. Sift together remaining dough dry ingredients. In 1/2 cup increments add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients (I use a stand mixer and add a new scoop about every 30 seconds or so). Once dough is well combined, chill for an hour or so.

Sift together the brown sugar and cinnamon for the crust. Remove any lumps that can not be reduced to powder.

Preheat oven to 400°F (204°C). Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper to make clean-up easier. Once the dough is chilled, remove from the refrigerator, using a #50 ice cream scoop (about 1 1/2 tablespoons) scoop out cookie dough, roll in crust, then place on cookie sheet. Do not flatten scoops. Bake for 11-13 minutes.

I used brown sugar instead of white because I wanted a little extra carmelization of the sugar. Light brown should work as well as dark brown, but dark is what I had on hand. The cookies were delightfully crispy on the outside and tender and chewy on the inside.

We went to a get together this weekend and I put out my cookies. People loved them (but no one wanted to eat the last one -- they didn't want to seem rude).