Sour Cream Chocolate Cake Cookies with Cinnamon Filling

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Spike of Spike Bakes. She chose Sour Cream Chocolate Cake Cookies. These are soft, cakey cookies with some sour cream in the batter. Although they contain some unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder, the chocolate flavor isn’t that pronounced. I changed these up a bit, but you can check out the complete recipe on Spike’s blog and also check out the links from all of the Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers; I think there will be quite a few innovative variations this week!

I made these cookies as the recipe specified, but I had read that others thought they were a little plain so I had already decided that I was going to make sandwich cookies. I left out the currants, since I wanted a clean chocolate canvas for the sandwiches. What type of filling to make? At first I was going to pair the cookies with raspberry jam, but my husband suggested some sort of filling with marshmallow fluff and with cinnamon. I tracked down a recipe for marshmallow fluff frosting and added some cinnamon to the mix and it tasted pretty good so I went with that.

The cookies themselves are a little plain. The dough is quite sticky and they are a touch sticky even after baking. They are nice and soft, almost like whoopee pies. Sandwiched together with the cinnamon filling they are extraordinary! The cinnamon pairs nicely with the chocolate and they are great. Frosting made with marshmallow fluff is fairly soft, which worked well with the soft cookies. These are one tasty sandwich cookie! Here’s the recipe for the cinnamon filling:

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup Marshmallow Fluff
1 teaspoon vanilla

In a medium bowl with mixer at medium speed, beat butter ingredients until light and fluffy.

Cookie recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 160

Filling recipe from Marshmallow Fluff Cookbook

Momofuku Milk Bar's Compost Cookie

Momofuku Milk Bar is a bakery in New York City, and their recipes have made the rounds of television and the blogosphere. I’d come across their Compost Cookie recipe online and had also seen their Crack Pie on a television show. After watching the show about the pie, I decided to investigate a bit more and I bookmarked the recipe for their Compost Cookies.

What I love about this cookie is that it leaves some ingredients up to your choosing. You are supposed to use 1-1/2 cups of baking ingredients and 1-1/2 cups of snack foods. For the snack food I really wanted to include potato chips, and luckily I almost always have a random bag of chips from some boxed lunch or another. I also had a Toblerone bar that I wanted to use. I just aimed for 3 cups of mix-ins, so I don’t have precise measurements. I used a combination of chopped up Toblerone bar, milk chocolate chips, caramel bits, chopped hazelnuts and potato chips. I figured all of those would be tasty together.

I refrigerated the dough for over 24 hours, but I still had a little trouble baking these up. The first batch I had put on the cookie sheets and set them on the counter for the last 5 minutes while the oven preheated. Big mistake! They spread like crazy and didn’t look good at all. I made sure I kept the dough in the refrigerator until the second I put them in the oven to bake. This helped but there was still a problem with the dough spreading. Regardless, they are super tasty! I can’t say that you can pick out each individual add-in, but together these cookies are great. I especially liked the caramel bits and the Toblerone bar. Unlike most of the cookies that I take to work, these stayed at home (other than the ones I took to my ballet teacher) and they all disappeared!

Momofuku Milk Bar's Compost Cookie

1 cup butter , softened
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon corn syrup (or honey)
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
1 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups baking ingredients (options: chocolate chips, nuts, etc.)
1 1/2 cups snack foods (chips, pretzels, etc.)

In a large mixer bowl, cream butter, sugar, brown sugar, and corn syrup/honey on medium high for two to three minutes until fluffy and pale yellow in color. Scrape down the bowl. Add the vanilla and eggs and stir on low to combine. Increase mixer speed to medium high and mix for 10 minutes. The mixture will become an almost pale white color and your creamed mixture will double in size.

With the mixer on low, add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix just until the dough comes together and all remnants of dry ingredients have incorporated, which for me took about 30 seconds. Do not over mix. Add the mix-ins and mix on low just until combined.

Using a large cookie scoop, scoop the dough onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Cover the cookie sheet with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour, or up to one week. (Do not bake these cookies at room temperature!)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Take the plastic wrap off of the cookies and place the dough on the prepared baking sheets. While in the oven, the cookies will puff, crackle and spread. Bake 9 to 11 minutes, until browned on the edges and beginning to brown in the center. Cool the cookies completely on the sheet pan.

Recipe from Christina Tosi via Amateur Gourmet

Almond Honey Bars

This recipe is from an Australian baking magazine, which poses some challenges. I’m used to British cookbooks where I have to convert from weight to volume measurements. Once I finally invested in a good scale that measures grams and kilograms, I’ve been good. What is unusual about this recipe is the pan it calls for: a 20 x 30 centimeter Lamington pan. This is such a neat cookbook with interesting recipes but all the bars use this type of pan, which is completely unavailable here in the States. I finally found a tart pan that was 20 x 29 centimeters, so close enough. You could also substitute a 9-inch square pan, but your bars would be a little thicker.

So with the pan situation solved, I’m free to try the recipes in this book. I like cookbooks from other countries because the put different flavors together. Also, I find that the recipes are usually a little less sweet; we love our sugar here in America! These do contain honey and brown sugar, so it isn’t as though these are savory. They’re sweet, just not too sweet.

These came together beautifully. The filling smelled diving when I was mixing it, a combination of honey and sweet chocolate. The almonds are the strongest flavor here, with the honey and chocolate acting as subtle support. I thought they would be chocolatier, but they aren’t, perhaps because you use milk chocolate rather than something with a stronger flavor. I took these to two places at work, and they were a big hit. I left just a couple at home to photograph, with a note telling my husband not to eat them. I came home to a note in response. I’m glad he’s such a fan of my baking!

Almond Honey Bars

1 cup flour
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ cup ground almonds
½ cup brown sugar, packed
6-1/2 tablespoons butter, melted

3 eggs
¼ cup brown sugar, packed
¼ cup honey
3-1/2 ounces milk chocolate, melted
1-1/2 cups sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 20 x 30 centimeter pan (or a 9” square pan).

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, nutmeg, ground almonds, brown sugar, and butter. Press the mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan. Bake for 12 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool for about 30 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees.

In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, brown sugar, honey, and melted chocolate. Pour over the cooled base. Sprinkle with the sliced almonds. Bake for 40 minutes or until topping is set. Cool in pan and then refrigerate several hours before cutting into bars.

Recipe from Australian Women’s Weekly Biscuits and Slices

Date-Nut Loaf

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet. She chose the Date-Nut Loaf. This is exactly what it sounds like: a quick bread with dates and nuts. You can get the complete recipe on Mary’s blog, and this is one that you’ll really want to get because this bread is so good. Some of the other Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers weren’t sure about using dates, so check out the TWD site to check out the links with all the variations of this recipe.

I love dates and I have a big supply on hand from Shields Date Garden in Indio, California. You don’t hear about dates being used that often, and to me, date-nut loaf strikes me as an old fashioned recipe. This loaf is a bit different, in that you add some cream cheese into the batter. I think that adds to the bread, making it very tender. I used pecans in this instead of walnuts.

Dorie suggests making this and allowing the flavors to come together for a day or so if possible. I did bake mine a wrapped it for almost 2 days before cutting. It wasn’t dry at all, probably thanks to the cream cheese. It smelled so good, almost like candy! The chopped up dates kind of melt into the bread, so that you get these beautiful pockets of sweetness. The dates are so soft and they are just great. I love the buttery flavor of the dates contrasted with the crunch of the nuts. This is great just sliced and I toasted a piece and I think that was even better. Ok, I toasted 2 pieces since the first one got really burned. I must do a better job watching the toaster! This bread is just the best thing ever. Sometimes old fashioned recipes have been around for a long time for a good reason.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 228

Lemon Bundt Cake

I made this cake for a birthday at work, and wanted to find a cake that was special but not something super sugary, with lots of frosting or anything like that. Another challenge was that I had little more than an hour to bake the cake, and I had to stop and get any needed ingredients at the store on the way home. Usually I like to go through recipes I have bookmarked, look through my cookbooks and decide what the best cake is for the occasion. This time, I used my search skills (I’m a librarian!) to quickly find something great.

I thought that I wanted to make something with lemon, so went and searched for lemon cake. I figured that a Bundt would be the best option, given my time constraint. I had wanted to make cupcakes, but by the time I made those and made frosting and frosted them, it would take too long. I found many lemon cake recipes and settled on this one from the Barefoot Contessa. I like her show, and the recipes of hers that I have made always turn out. I was also intrigued that this called for the zest of 6-8 lemons. Wow!

This cake is really lemony, and I’m still debating whether it is too lemony. It has just a touch of bitterness/sourness from the lemons. The lemon zest, the lemon syrup, and the lemon glaze are a lot. I ended up using 8 lemons total to make this cake, which I am sure is a record for me. I thought it was good and it was a big hit at work. You can’t eat a very big slice of these, since the flavor is so strong, so you could consider this health food!

Lemon Bundt Cake

2 sticks butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, at room temperature
1/3 cup grated lemon zest (6 to 8 large lemons)
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
3/4 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
About 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a Bundt pan.

In a large mixer bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, mixing at medium speed after each addition. Mix in lemon zest being careful to break up any clumps.

In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a large liquid measuring cup, combine the lemon juice, buttermilk, and vanilla. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter, sugar, and eggs. Then add 1/2 the liquid, another 1/3 of the flour, the rest of the liquid, and the rest of the flour, mixing after each addition. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 45-60 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes.

Just as the cake comes out of the oven, combine 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup lemon juice in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves. Turn the cake out of the pan onto a wire rack set over a tray. Use a skewer to poke holes in the top of the cake. Slowly pour/spoon the warm lemon syrup over the top of the cake. Let cake cool completely.

Make the glaze: sift the powdered sugar into a bowl and add lemon juice, stirring until the desired consistency is reached. Drizzle over cake, allowing it to run down the sides.

Recipe from Barefoot Contessa Parties! via Little Blue Hen

Peanut Butter Cookies Perfected

This is my second time making these cookies. The first time I made them, I didn’t photograph them because I thought “well, these are just peanut butter cookies and they aren’t that exciting to post.” Plus I had hoped to throw in some peanut butter M&Ms but that was a big fail. But I really like a homey cookie sometimes and these really are something special. Yes, they are peanut butter cookies, but they are really very good.

I really like it when I find blogs where they take a normal, everyday food and tweak it to make it better. I’ve actually been tempted to find all the recipes on Tastespotting or Food Gawker that say this is the best chocolate chip cookie and do a comparison. (My husband would really love that!) This recipe takes a pretty standard peanut butter cookie and adds peanut butter chips and roasted peanuts. I didn’t have peanut butter chips the first time I made these and I think they add a lot. Both times I made this recipe, I used honey roasted mixed nuts (cashews and macadamias). Yum!

I don’t flatten my cookies since I like a thick, chewy cookie. These will seem under baked when you take them out of the oven, so try and resist the urge to bake them a little longer. They don’t brown that much, so it can be a little hard to tell. I made my cookies smaller than the original recipe, but I still had to bake them for the full 15 minutes. These are great: the honey roasted nuts add sweetness and the peanut butter chips make them just that much more decadent. Are they the perfect peanut butter cookie? I don’t know, but they sure are the best ones I have ever had!

Peanut Butter Cookies Perfected

2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup dry-roasted salted peanuts, chopped
1 cup peanut butter chips
Coarse sugar

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugars together until fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla and stir until combined. The mixture will look light and fluffy. Add the peanut butter and stir until just incorporated.

Add half of the flour mixture and mix for 15 seconds. Add the remaining flour mixture, the peanuts and the peanut butter chips. Mix until just incorporated. Cover the bowl tightly and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. The dough gets better the longer it is refrigerated (up to 3 days).

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Scoop tablespoons of dough onto the prepared cookie sheets. Form into a ball and tip the tops of the cookies in coarse sugar. If desired, press down on the top slightly or flatten with a fork dipped in flour. Bake for 14-15 minutes, until the edges of the cookies are browned. (They will still be a little soft, but firm up when removed from the oven.) Allow them to cool for a couple of minutes on the baking sheet before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Making Life Delicious

Chocolate Biscotti

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was picked by Jacque of Daisy Lane Cakes. She chose Chocolate Biscotti. Dorie’s biscotti are full of chocolate chips and almonds, and I decided to add cherries, which was one of the variations. You can get the complete recipe for these on Jacque’s blog. I like biscotti, but they aren’t as rich as decadent as other cookies. These have enough add-ins that they just might win over the skeptics that think that biscotti are too dry.

I made a half batch of these, which still makes a nice batch of cookies. It doesn’t seem like the dough will come together since there isn’t much butter and just an egg to hold everything together. The dough did come together, but mine was super sticky! I really had trouble forming it into shape for the first baking. I had to flour the counter, which I didn’t want to do with a chocolate cookie, but I really had no choice. Once I got the cookies shaped, they baked up just fine. They even weren’t too crumbly when I sliced them, which is a problem that I have with biscotti sometimes.

You can also dip these in chocolate, but I decided not to since I had already added so many ingredients to the cookies. These cookies aren’t too sweet and the dried cherries add a nice sweet/tart flavor. If you wanted a sweeter cookie, I think dipping them in chocolate would be good. Mine aren’t as dry as some biscotti that I have had and I’m happy about that. I can’t say that these would really hit the spot when I am craving a homey, decadent cookie, but they are very nice.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 144

Brownie Cookies

My husband and I went away for the weekend recently and the place we stayed had this little wine bar in the lobby. We’d discovered some good wines there before so we made sure that we paid them another visit. We had some wine again and to go with it my husband ordered a plate of cookies. Sure, you’re thinking that it should be milk and cookies not wine and cookies, but trust me, cookies go just fine with wine.

One of the cookies that they brought was a very chocolaty cookie that was flaky around the edges and very dense. I figured that they contained lots of chocolate and very little flour, so when I came home I searched for a similar recipe. I searched and came across a lot of brownie cookies that seemed on the right track. I was deciding between a couple recipes but I noticed that most were based on the cookie posted by Brown Eyed Baker, so I went with that one.

These use a lot of chocolate and not a lot of flour, but that’s what makes them so good. The dough for these is very thin, so I decided to refrigerate the dough to firm it up. Well, I got distracted and I never ended up getting back to making the cookies! The dough was really solid after 24 hours of refrigeration, but I left it at room temperature for a while and it finally became workable again. Mine didn’t spread at all, but I think they would have been thinner had I not refrigerated the dough. These cookies are really good: chocolaty but not too sweet. Perfect with a glass of milk (or wine!).

16 ounces dark or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
4 eggs
1-1/3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 cup mini chocolate chips

Put the chocolate and butter in the top of a double boiler and set it over barely simmering water. Stir occasionally, until completely melted and smooth.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, vanilla and sugar. Set aside. In a small bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder. Add the melted chocolate mixture to the egg mixture and whisk to combine. Slowly add the dry ingredients, folding them into the batter with a spatula. Once all of the flour is incorporated, stir in the chocolate chips. If desired, refrigerate dough for 30 minutes or longer.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Scoop tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until they are firm on the outside, do not over bake! Allow to cool on the baking sheet before removing to a wire rack.

Recipe from Brown Eyed Baker

Butter Rum Sandwich Cookies

I’ve wanted to make some sandwich cookies for a while now. There’s just something fun about a sandwich cookie, I’m not sure if it’s the filling or the fact that you get two cookies and some extra! I came across these rum sandwich cookies in a cookie magazine and knew they would be a hit. You get the fun of a sandwich cookie and the added benefit of rum. I make these cookies for Fridays, and sometimes by Friday it has been a long week!

These sandwiches are supposed to be triangles, but I thought that was needlessly fussy to try and shape the logs into triangles. The rounds are just fine. I didn’t top my cookies with sanding sugar as the original recipe specified, mainly because I only had orange sanding sugar and that would not have worked with a butter rum cookie. That would have added a little crunch, so if you have sanding sugar on hand feel free to sprinkle the cookies with sugar before baking.

Processing the powdered sugar and pecans before adding it to the dough was a little odd as the pecans are already chopped, but you don’t want big chunks of nuts at all. I have another favorite slice-and-bake recipe that has chunks of almonds and they are nearly impossible to slice cleanly. That was no problem with these cookies. This recipe doesn’t make very much filling, but it was just the right amount. I usually make extra filling/frosting since I like that so much, but I was ok here. The cookies taste like nutty shortbread and the rum filling adds the perfect touch.

½ cup powdered sugar
1/3 cup chopped pecans
1 cup butter, softened
2 tablespoons rum
½ teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt

1-1/3 cups powdered sugar
¼ cup butter, softened
1-1/2 teaspoons rum
1-2 tablespoons milk

In a food processor or small chopper, combine the powdered sugar and pecans. Processes until the pecans are finely chopped, about one minute. In a large mixer bowl, add the powdered sugar/pecan mixture, butter, rum, and vanilla. Mix in medium until creamy, 2-3 minutes. Reduce mixer speed to low and add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat until well mixed.

Divide the dough in half; shape each half into a 12-inch long roll. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least two hours.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Slice the logs into ¼” slices and place on the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 9-11 minutes, until the edges begin to brown. Cool completely.

Make the filling: In a large mixer bowl combine the powdered sugar, butter, and rum. Stir to combine. Turn the mixer to low and gradually add just enough milk to get the filling to the desired consistency. Spread about ¾ teaspoon filling on the bottom of cookie and sandwich together with a second cookie.

Recipe from Land O Lakes

Blueberry-Brown Sugar Plain Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was chosen by Cindy of Everyday Insanity. She chose the Blueberry-Brown Sugar Plain Cake, which I guess I would describe as a blueberry coffee cake. You can get the recipe for this cake on Cindy’s blog and make sure you check out the Tuesdays with Dorie site to see how others interpreted this recipe. Since blueberries may or may not be in season for people from around the country (and the world), I’m sure there were some variations using different fruit.

I think calling it a “plain” cake is a bit unfair, because it didn’t seem plain when I was eating it. But I guess that it is fairly simple with no nuts or streusel or icing. The method for making the cake was a little different, in that you beat the egg whites, then make a butter cake recipe and then fold on the egg whites. I messed up my egg whites a bit but they still worked. I had some lovely fresh blueberries to use too, so I was excited for this. The house I lived in the first 6 years of my life had lots of blueberry bushes in the back, so I’ve loved blueberries for the longest time. (I didn’t like that there were spiders in the bushes, but that’s another story.)

I didn’t have a 7” x 11” pan, so I used an oval baking dish that was roughly the same size. I watched the baking time but it baked for the recommended amount of time. After serving the cake, I think I would have baked it just a touch longer, but it tested done. With the brown sugar batter, it was difficult to use the color of the cake to see how done it was. All of my blueberries sank to the bottom of the cake, so next time I will toss them with some flour. I really liked this cake. Mine was super moist and warm when I served it and the brown sugar cake was so very good. This cake was perhaps unadorned but it was a really great way to showcase blueberries.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 36

Lemon Poppyseed Cookies

It seems like flavors come and go in terms of popularity. Lots of recipes last year used green tea powder. I’m not sure what flavor is big this year. What do you think? Lemon poppyseed was a big flavor back in the 1980s or 1990s, but it’s a great combination so it was nice to put them together in a cookie. I usually see lemon poppyseed muffins but they are usually so big, kind of dry and not that flavorful. These are tender little cookies loaded with flavor.

This was one of the other cookies that I made for our tea in the library a couple of weeks ago. Lemon cookies always seem so dainty, and adding poppyseed to them makes them more special. These are very simple, just butter, sugar, flour and the flavorings. The original recipe called for orange zest, but I think lemon is a more fitting match.

These cookies spread around the edges a little while baking, and mainly because they have a lot of butter. I might try chilling the dough before baking to see if that will help. I think that these are a perfect tea cookie: simple clean flavors in a nice little cookie.

10 tablespoons butter, softened
1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar
1-3/4 cup flour
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon poppy seeds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add flour, zest, and poppy seeds. Mix until combined.

Roll into small balls. Place onto prepared baking sheets. Flatten with a fork. Bake for 15 minutes or until lightly brown. Let cookies cool slightly before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from San’s Blessed Moments

A Tale of Two Cinnamons

I came home from work the other day and I just wanted to bake. Now this shouldn’t be surprising, but I really wanted to make something homey, something comforting. I didn’t want to try the latest cookie that I’d spotted online or a cookie inspired by something I’d seen elsewhere. So I turned to the cookbook I used growing up: the 1969 Betty Crocker cookbook and I turned to the well-worn, splattered page for snickerdoodles.

I don’t like to make things more than once for my blog, but I decided to try an experiment. When I was at Penzey’s Spices recently, I had picked up two different types of cinnamon. I wanted to make snickerdoodles with the different cinnamons and do a comparison. Half of these cookies used Vietnamese cinnamon and the other half used Ceylon cinnamon. As it turns out, I got a Penzey’s Spices catalog in the mail and I noticed they had a few more varieties of cinnamon. I could only test two this time around.

Ceylon cinnamon is quite a bit different from the cinnamon you typically buy at the grocery store. It’s not as sweet and has just a bit of a bite to it. The aroma is woody and that flavor came through in the snickerdoodles. The flavor was subtle, but the Ceylon cinnamon added a bit of a bite. The Vietnamese cinnamon was similar to an extra aromatic version of grocery store cinnamon. For the snickerdoodles, I preferred the Vietnamese cinnamon. It was a bit darker though, which made my snickerdoodles look different. I would use the Ceylon cinnamon in a savory stew or soup, since it had a more complex flavor. It was interesting to try different cinnamons with this tried and true recipe.

½ cup butter, softened
½ cup shortening
1-1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2-3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon soda
¼ teaspoon salt

Cinnamon Sugar
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cinnamon

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, mix butter, shortening, sugar and eggs. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, soda and salt. Shape dough by rounded teaspoonfuls into balls.

Roll balls in cinnamon sugar. Place on prepared cookie sheets and bake for 8-10 minutes. Immediately remove from cookies sheets to cool.

Recipe from the Betty Crocker Cookbook (1969 edition)