I hadn’t made Snickerdoodles since I was pre-teen, stirring away at cookie dough in my Mom’s kitchen. My Mom always seemed to be on a diet, and didn’t really like it when I baked anything too big. She would implore me to only use half a cake mix (how do you do that?) and discouraged me from trying my Grandma’s scratch cake recipes because ‘there are only three of us and we’ll never eat all that cake’. But cookies Mom could handle. And so, because I loved to bake, I made loads and loads of cookies.

Mom usually urged me to make Bachelor Buttons, probably because they contained fruit and nuts which made them a bit healthier. It wasn’t her fault - Mom suffered from the dichotomy of being secretly anorexic while having also trained as a nutritionist. The fact that she had a daughter who loved to bake was probably a special kind of hell for her. The huge irony was that she was actually a wonderful cook.

Anyway one day, aged about nine or ten, I remember rebelling veering away from the norm and making Snickerdoodles. I loved their wonderful cinnamon sugar topping, but for some reason I never made them again. I have no idea where I got the recipe but I did write it out and kept it  tucked away in my recipe file. It may well have been from one of my Mom’s well thumbed copies of Better Homes and Gardens but I cannot be sure!

Last week, in the lull between Christmas and New Year, I was going through my old recipes and the Snickerdoodle recipe jumped out at me. I remembered their cinnamon-y goodness fondly so I made Snickerdoodles again for only the second time in my life - and for the first time as an adult. I’m very glad I did. Once my British husband and son (who had never heard of Snickerdoodles) stopped teasing me about the name of the cookies everything was fine. It didn’t take them long to stop though - it’s hard to giggle with your mouth full!!

Makes 6 dozen cookies

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups white sugar

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups all purpose flour

3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

I use an electric mixer to make these cookies.

Preheat the oven to 350℉ (170℃).  Cream the butter. Add the sugar, baking soda and cream of tartar and cream together well. Scrape the sides of the bowl from time to time to be sure everything is well mixed.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in the vanilla.

Gradually beat in the flour, a bit at a time, until it become too difficult to mix with the electric mixer. Then gradually add the rest of the flour, stirring in with a wooden spoon.

Put the mixture into the fridge for about half an hour.

Meanwhile, mix together the 3 tablespoons of sugar and 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon.

Remove the cookie mixture from the fridge and roll into small balls (and I do mean small, these really spread!). Roll the cookie balls in the cinnamon sugar mixture and place two inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for 10 to 11 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the cookie sheets for a minute or two before removing the cookies. Then carefully remove them and cool on a wire rack.

Store in an airtight container.

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