It began with snickerdoodles...

I thought that it would be appropriate for the very first post of this blog to be the very first thing I ever made, which was snickerdoodles. When I was eight years old, my third grade class compiled all of our mothers' favorite recipes and turned them into a cookbook to give to our mothers for Mother's Day. I don't remember any of the recipes, except the snickerdoodle recipe because it was the only recipe that my mom allowed me to make.

I'm pretty picky when it comes to snickerdoodles, which I attribute to this recipe. Because this was the first snickerdoodle that I ever ate, a real snickerdoodle must look and taste like these cookies. For me, snickerdoodles MUST be cracked and they MUST be rolled in cinammon sugar. Also, I normally don't like shortening in cookies, I usually believe that you have to use butter but, for me, shortening must be used in these cookies. I don't have any justification for any of this reasoning, it's just the way it is. You show an eight year old something, they will think that's the way it should be... even 22 years later.

So I share with you my snickerdoodle recipe that I still love to this day.

Snickerdoodles

from my third grade Mother's Day cookbook

Ingredients:

1 c. butter flavored shortening

1 1/2 c. sugar

2 eggs

2 3/4 c. flour

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

cinammon sugar (1/2 c. sugar and 1/4 tsp. cinammon)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Cream together shortening, sugar, and eggs. Sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Stir flour mixture into the sugar mixture until dough forms.

Form dough into small balls (about the size of a ping pong ball), then roll in the cinammon sugar mixture and place on a cookie sheet.

Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes. Cookies should have spread out and have cracked. Be careful not to overbake, cookies will look undone in between the cracks, but will continue to cook when removed from the oven.

Makes about 2 dozen cookies.