We continue cinnamon sugar week with one of the most deceptively innocent-looking cookies ever. Snickerdoodles – basically sugar cookies rolled in cinnamon sugar – are often small and rather unassuming. They don’t have any luscious melty chunks of chocolate (or anything else). And yet… I dare you to eat just one. They are mind-bogglingly addictive. The Pringles of the cookie world, if you will.
And… that’s all I really have to say on this subject. Snickerdoodles are delicious and easy and you should make them. If you have the need to show up somewhere with cookies, I strongly suggest these. Some people don’t like chocolate, but snickerdoodles are absolutely a safe bet. Everyone loves them.
In a certain sense, though, snickerdoodles are a little hard for me to wax rhapsodic about (yes! I’ve been waiting for a chance to use that phrase for years!) because they’re a cookie that resists experimentation and variation. Sure, you could coat them in a more chai-inspired sugar and spice mixture, and I once made pumpkin snickerdoodles that were really, really good. But, as I already mentioned, I’m trying to be a little more creative this year with my cooking, and snickerdoodles aren’t really the blank canvas I need. You know what inspires me? Eclairs. I want to try and make spicy chocolate eclairs, and chai eclairs, and coconut eclairs. I have about twenty ideas for scones floating around in my brain, of which the french onion soup scones were only the first. But the thing about developing recipes is that I know that a lot of them are going to fail utterly. Half of them will be good but not fully reach the potential I had imagined for them. A third will probably be completely and utterly inedible. I’m at peace with that. And when the eclairs that I planned to bring to a party fall through, I’ll probably whip up some snickerdoodles instead. They’re a wonderful thing to have in your arsenal.
