Snickerdoodles!

No, that's not me finding creative ways to swear without swearing. (why the fuck would I do that?)

It's cookies!

In addition to these being one of Recipe Guy's favourite cookies (which means I will be making them again in a few months), I had a request for these at work. Yup, I'm back to work full time, which means the cookie request board is back in business.

Snickerdoodles are a variation on a sugar cookie. They have a slightly softer dough than typical sugar cookies, and because of that they aren't rolled flat and cut. They're rolled into balls and allowed to flatten all on their own. They're also covered in cinnamon sugar. Anything covered in cinnamon sugar is awesome. Even toast.

The one distinct difference between snickerdoodles and other sugar cookies is the leavener. Snickerdoodles use cream of tartar in place of the baking powder.

Cream of tartar is actually a component of baking powder, but the use of it straight to react with the baking soda results in a cookie that puffs up beautifully in the oven, breaking the sugared top and creating that lovely crackled look.

They fall a bit as the air trapped inside them cools and decreases in volume, minimizing the cracked look, but they'll stay nice and soft inside. Soft chewy middle, crispy crackled outside, and covered in cinnamon sugar like some kind of perfect cookie version of a breakfast doughnut...

Snickerdoodles

• 1 c butter
• 1 1/2 c sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2-1/2 to 3 c flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• cinnamon sugar

Make sure the butter and eggs are at room temperature. If they're not, use one of Taneasha's awesome tips to fix that.

Cream the butter and sugar until they're fluffy and golden.

Beat in the eggs and vanilla until you have something resembling a soft buttercream icing.

Dump in 2-1/2 cups of flour, and then top with the baking soda and cream of tartar. Give the dry stuff a gentle stir before mixing it into the wet stuff. Once you've got the flour mixed in, decide if you need any of that remaining cup.

The dough should be soft and a little bit sticky.

You should be able to form it into a ball with only minimal amounts sticking to your fingers.

Wrap the almost sticky dough in plastic and let it chill in the fridge for at least 10 minutes. You can leave it in there for a day if you're planning ahead, but if you do, give it at least 30 minutes on the counter. If it's too cold, you'll need to put a lot of work into rolling the dough into balls, and since cookies are technically a pastry, you want to touch them as little as possible.

Cold balls plus too much handling equals tough cookies.

Preheat the oven now! 350.

Bust off a piece of dough about the size of a cherry.

Gently roll it into a ball, and then drop that ball into a small dish of cinnamon sugar.

Jiggle the dish and roll the ball around until it's completely covered.

Once you've done that a dozen times, and have a dozen sugary balls on a parchment covered sheet, bake them for 8 to 10 minutes.

(It took a lot of restraint to not eat these things! Holy crap I need to make some kind of no bake doughnut hole cookie!)

Mine needed only 8.

These things are freaking amazing. I've already packed them up to take to work because if I didn't I'd probably eat a dozen between now and then. Mostly now.

What's your favourite cookie?

Pear Mayhem!

Oh, it's Mayhem alright.

I bought a bag of pears a little while ago and they are delicious and just the right size for taking to lunch for afternoon snacks, but the trouble with a whole bag of pears is that they all ripen at the same time. And then you have a bag of super-ripe pears and way more afternoon snacks than one person can eat in three days.

Fortunately, you also need something to take for breakfast. Or eat at home for breakfast. Or dessert. But really, this is more of a breakfast cake.

Cake for breakfast! Mayhem!

Oh, and once again, I'm winging it. Because, I laugh in the face of Mayhem!

It laughed back at me.

Pear Upside Down Cake

• 3-4 pears
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2 pears, grated

Preheat the oven to 350 and bring all the ingredients to room temperature. 

Butter and line an 8 inch square pan with parchment.

Pour the melted butter into the pan, sprinkle over the sugar, and lay in the pears. If you plan on presenting this for some kind of fancy breakfast, you could arrange the pears artfully. Me, I wanted to use as many as possible, so I crammed 4 pears into the bottom of the pan.

Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the eggs.

If you ever get eggshell in your batter, the best thing to take it out is another eggshell.

Beat in the eggs, and then the ginger and the milk.

Mix in the dry ingredients. If you'd like to sift the baking powder and baking soda into the flour first, go right ahead, but this is a quick cake, and if you just give the dry stuff a bit of a stir as it sits on top of the wet before mixing the two together, that's just fine.

If the pears you're grating in aren't super ripe and juicy, you may want to add anothe 1/4 cup of milk or pear juice. However, I recommend using ridiculously ripe pears.

Pears seem to be classed as a "hard" fruit most of the time, treated much like apples are, but a nice ripe pear is not crisp like an apple is. A perfectly ripe pear will crush in your hand the same way a peach does.

Mix in the pears and spread the batter over the sliced ones on the bottom of the pan.

Hm. That's a really full pan.

I however, am not anywhere near as smart as Taneasha, and I didn't put mine onto a baking sheet.

Instead I popped the pan in the oven and set the timer for 40 minutes.

10 minutes later, the cake started sending me smoke signals out of the vent. I opened the oven. And then I opened every window in my apartment and the front door.

The sugar at the bottom of the pan had bubbled up and overflowed onto the bottom of the oven.

I yanked the cake and put it on a sheet covered with parchment, then shoved it back into the oven.

I had to vent the smoke every few minutes for the next 15 minutes, but eventually it cleared.

I've been thinking for a while that I should clean the oven. I guess I really have to now.

Um, okay, apparently rising was not an issue this time.

Crap, I'm supposed to flip this thing upside down to let the pears out.

A bread knife, horizontal, and that wacky peak is taken care of. This trick works well for levelling out the bottom half of a layer cake too.

And since I don't have a square plate, or a round platter big enough for this thing, and since I need something to store it in, I flipped it into my 9 inch square Corningware pan.

Nailed it.

I'll just trim the edge off to make it fit.

The taste of this is just fabulous. I know there's nothing in there but ginger, but that's the point. The ginger gives the soft cake a nice bite that perfectly offsets the smooth pear.

And the caramel! Holy cow.

I think next time I may add a bit of ginger to the sugar-butter mixture that makes up the caramel.

What would you add ginger to?