The Flaming Pot Holder

I love baking cookies during the holidays, but I think sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies are labor intensive. I enjoy making the cookie dough, but finishing the cookies isn’t my favorite part. With all the rolling, choosing cookie cutters, frosting them, and decorating, it takes time (Did I mention that I get bored easily and tend to bounce from task to task?!? Well, I do.) This year, we dialed down the holidays so I decided to try an easier cookie – snickerdoodles. Granted, I’d never made them before, but thought it was worth a try. Years ago, my friend Christine Teague gave me her Grandmother’s snickerdoodle recipe. I made a few changes to her original recipe: substituted butter for the shortening, added a bit more spice to the cookie dough, and added some vanilla. They were delicious!

Possible vegan option:  I haven’t tried this yet, but I think you could use vegetable shortening and an egg substitute and these would be fine as a vegan option. Ah, so much cooking and experimenting to do, so little time!

Here’s the tweaked recipe, hope you like them:

1 cup softened butter

1½ cups sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2¾ cups all-purpose flour, sifted

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, optional

¼ teaspoon cinnamon (or apple or pumpkin pie spice), optional

For rolling:

2 tablespoons white sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Cream together the butter and the sugar. Add the eggs and the vanilla. Blend in the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

Chill the dough. While the dough is chilling, mix the 2 tablespoons sugar and the 2 teaspoons cinnamon. Form the dough into balls about the size of walnuts and roll them in the cinnamon sugar mixture.

Preheat oven to 350º degrees F. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets and flatten slightly with your hand, a glass, something (this will make a crisper cookie)*. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until set but not too hard. Remove from baking sheets and cool on racks.

*I have a strange technique when making ball cookies or drop cookies…I really like crisp, flat cookies. So, not only do I flatten the balls but I also open the oven mid-way through cooking, pick up the cookie sheet (using a handy-dandy pot holder), and whack the cookie sheet on the oven rack so the cookies deflate. I know, you aren’t supposed to open the oven, but I’ve been doing it since I was a kid and some habits are too hard to change (and Matt says it works!).