Snickerdoodles

Story time: I have a dog named Snickers, and all throughout high school I always felt uncomfortable making/eating snickerdoodles because they reminded me of my dog (I never felt weird about eating the Snickers candy bar, though - go figure).

Anyway, I just made a batch of Snickerdoodles to bring to a study group tomorrow, and I must say that I think I was definitely missing out  in high school for having a snickerdoodle-phobia. These cookies are spicy-sweet, crunchy on the outside and melt-in-your-mouth soft on the inside. It's such a satisfying cookie to bite into!

I used the recipe that was posted on How To Eat A Cupcake, but I decided to post them here mostly because I made my cookies a lot smaller than she did (about 2 inches in diameter rather than 4). This had mixed effects: the outside had a nice crunch to it and the cookies rose magnificently, but there was still a small part in the middle of the cookie that didn't bake all the way through. Despite this little hiccup, I would definitely make this recipe again!

Snickerdoodles
Makes about 40 medium cookies
INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. Cream together butter, shortening, 1 1/2 cups sugar, eggs, and vanilla. Mix in the flour, cream of tartar, soda and salt. Shape dough by rounded spoonfuls into balls. I found that shaping all of the balls before rolling in the sugar mixture really helped - that way they wouldn't get goopy from my cinnomon-y hands between rolls.
3. Mix the 2 tablespoons sugar and the cinnamon. Roll balls of dough in mixture. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. I found I needed a little more than this. Try 3 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of cinnamon.
4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until set but not too hard. Remove immediately from baking sheets.