Smells Like Home’s 12 Days of Cookies: Day 2
Day 2 of the 12 Days of Cookies brings you Maple Snickerdoodles. You probably haven’t met many people, but I’m one of those who doesn’t remember ever eating a snickerdoodle and has definitely never made them before. Crazy? Yes. I know. It just wasn’t ever one my mom made while I was a kid and wasn’t popular in my family but it’s all I’ve heard about the past few years on my cooking board…aside from oreo truffles of course. So when I gave Kyle free reign of picking a few cookies to make last weekend this was one of the choices he came up with along with the coconut cream-filled macaroons and the soon-to-be-posted pumpkin brown butter icing cookies.
I’d have to say that he did an excellent job choosing cookies that weekend since these maple snickerdoodles were awesome. I’ve had issues with maple flavor being strong enough in other recipes but you could definitely taste the maple in these cookies so I was definitely satisfied although I did add some additional syrup to ensure this would happen (see my other revisions below). The recipe called to roll the cookies in maple sugar which, incidentally is difficult to find and expensive when you can find it, so I used some vanilla sugar instead. The vanilla sugar complements the maple flavor very well and didn’t over-sweeten the cookie as some of the recipe reviewers complained about.
So if you’re concerned about baking too far in advance of your holiday events or are completely freaked out about how you’re going to get all of your baking done, have no fear. These cookies along with a few others I plan to feature in the next 10 days can be made in advance, frozen, and baked-off in a pinch. For these snickerdoodles, I worked the recipe up through rolling them in sugar and then froze the rolled cookie balls on a parchment-lined baking sheet. After they were completely frozen, I tossed them into a plastic zipper bag, making sure to write the baking instructions in a Sharpie on the bag. When you’re ready to bake the frozen dough, preheat the oven and bake the frozen dough for a 10-12 minutes. Simple!
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Maple Snickerdoodles
source: adapted from allrecipes.com
Ingredients:
- 2 cups plus 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup real maple syrup, Grade A or B
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup white sugar
- 3 tablespoons vanilla sugar
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and 1 cup of white sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and maple syrup. Gradually blend in the dry ingredients until just mixed. In a small dish, mix together the remaining 1/2 cup white sugar and the maple sugar. Roll dough into 1 inch balls, and roll the balls in the sugar mixture. Place cookies 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
- Bake 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Cookies will be crackly on top and look wet in the middle. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.
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Mmmmm….snickerdoodles are so good! I’m going to bookmark this page so I can make my own. My friend took me to this place that makes Indianapolis Specialty Desserts and we both bought these desserts for a holiday party for our classes. Maybe it would’ve been a better idea to make them, but I think some parents have a problem with that so straight from a bakery it is!
I am just about to start making these, love snickerdoodles and love maple, so looking forward to trying them! Would love to know where that cute reindeer plate came from. 🙂
I hope they turn out great for you, Amanda! The plate was part of a set (of 4) that I received last Christmas. I believe the set came from Pottery Barn.
Hey, Im about to make this recipe. Problem is that in the ingredients say vanilla sugar and in the directions you have maple sugar there. I bought the vanilla sugar but now that I saw the typo…I checked the Allrecipes recipe and I seen that it says maple sugar. Just thought you should know so you can correct it, unless you did use vanilla sugar.
Ok oops my mistake. I saw you wrote in the intro that you used vanilla sugar instead. I’m sorry. I will use the vanilla sugar like you did.