Snickerdoodles! (Part 2)

Yep. This is the recipe for snickerdoodles (which I've decided not to capitalize).

Jessica's snickerdoodles

14.25 oz all-purpose flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks of butter (8 oz), room temperature or slightly cooler
10.6 oz sugar
2 large eggs (3.4 oz)
1.5 tsp vanilla
1 Tb ground cinnamon
1.25 oz sugar

Preheat the oven to 400° and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Combine the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well to combine. Add the half the flour mixture, mix to combine, then add the rest and mix until all the flour is incorporated. Refrigerate the dough for any amount of time you feel like. Even just 5 minutes makes for a puffier cookie. But the cookies will still be good even if you don't refrigerate the dough. EDIT: I made them again, refrigerating the dough for an hour before baking. DO THIS. It makes a huge difference. The cookies turned out more perfectly than I even thought possible. Everyone at Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house agreed.

The dough for the cookie on the left was not refrigerated.
The dough for the cookie on the right was in the fridge for just 5 to 10 minutes.

Mix together the cinnamon and sugar. Roll 1-inch balls of dough in the cinnamon sugar and place on a baking sheet (I fit 12 on a half sheet pan). Bake for 10 minutes, rotating the baking sheet half way through. Remove from the oven and immediately transfer the cookies to a rack to cool.

They're delicious. Obviously. :)

Snickerdoodles!

Aaron says his favorite cookies are Snickerdoodles, so I added them to the menu for his friend Andy's birthday party tonight. I got up at 6:30 a.m. to bake them, and I plan to spend many more mornings baking. It's a lovely way to start the day.

These turned out extremely tasty, but very flat. Possible culprits:

1. Flour. As in, not enough flour. I've been suspecting this as the cause of my recent flat-cookie syndrome, so I've started measuring by weight instead of volume (1 cup of flour = 4.41 oz). I now suspect that modern recipes may be intentionally under-doing it on the flour with the thinking that modern home bakers measure by scooping into a compacted bag of flour. Next time I make these, I'll add an extra two ounces of flour and see what happens.
2. Warm dough. Next time, I'll refrigerate half the dough for a few hours before baking to compare. 

Despite the flatness, a lot of things aren't wrong about these cookies: not too sweet, not overpoweringly cinnamon-y, not tough, not cakey, not dry. They're chewy with a little crunch on the edges, full of buttery flavor, and generally delicious. Recipe after the break.