Snickerdoodles

A dessert! A delicious, delicious dessert! This recipe made its way to me via Smitten Kitchen and it looked easy enough. I won't copy the recipe here (as we didn't modify it at all), but there were a few learnings from it.

Something was slightly off with our cookies when they came out of the oven - its either the fact some extra salt spilled into the recipe, or that our cinnamon and sugar bowl wasn't empty when the last cookie was coated. I would recommend switching from 1 1/2 cups sugar in dough and 1/4 cup reserved to 1 5/8 cups sugar in dough and 1/4 cup reserved. You can use the extra sugar/cinnamon mixture as an ice cream topper. Trust me, it is really good.

 Otherwise, no changes in the recipe - the cooking time of 10 minutes was spot-on. The second batch ended up getting 12 minutes and the smaller ones got far too crispy. Also, be warned, these are soft cookies. If you want your snickerdoodles hard, go elsewhere.

 A word of warning: if you don't have a mixer, fluffing butter and sugar can take some work. The strategy I used was to cube the butter to about the size of sugar cubes and knead the sugar in by hand. Once it is a smooth consistency, put it in a small bowl about twice the volume of the butter mass and stir quickly with a wooden spoon until it gets fluffy or airy. You can also use a whisk towards the end, but it isn't strictly necessary.