Snickerdoodle Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Are snickerdoodles supposed to be soft when they come out of the oven? ›

They puff in the oven and then settle back down while cooling into a soft, thick, supremely chewy cookie with a gorgeous crinkly top.

One of the most common reasons why cookies didn't spread out in the oven is because you added too much flour. Cookies rely on the perfect ratio of butter to flour in order to spread just the right amount when baked. What is this? It's very easy to over measure flour when using cup measurements.

You can use 1.5 teaspoons (6 grams) of baking powder to replace 1 teaspoon (3.5 grams) of cream of tartar. This substitution is ideal because it can be used in any recipe without modifying the taste or texture of the final product.

This type of acid closely resembles vinegar and lemon juice, so if you don't have any cream of tartar, you can either skip it or simply replace it with an acidic substitute.

Soft – Dough that's “soft” or “runny” can be thickened by adding one or two tablespoons of flour to your mix. This will help keep your batch from “Spreading” and coming out of the oven looking like flat, not-so-cookie-like puddles.

Snickerdoodles might turn out hard if they are overbaked or if the dough is too dry.

“Baking cookies in a too-cool oven will cause the fat to melt before your cookies set up, leading to spreading,” Dawn says. Grab an oven thermometer the next time you're in the grocery store so you can be sure your oven is at the correct temperature.

Too little flour and too much sugar are often the source of flat cookies, so measure carefully and accurately by using dry measuring spoons and cups for dry ingredients (so that you can spoon the ingredients into them and sweep away the excess) and use cups with pouring spouts for liquids.

Cracking occurs from several chemical reactions during the baking process. If some of your cookies aren't cracking, it could be because those dough balls were less round than others, the dough became too warm, your oven isn't heating evenly, or (most likely) the cinnamon sugar coating wasn't applied as thoroughly.

Kind of like how crumbly dough is usually because there's too much of the dry ingredients, runny cookie dough comes from having too much of the liquid ingredients.

Why are my snickerdoodles so soft? ›

Slightly under-baking the snickerdoodles also guarantees a softer cookie. Take them out of the oven after about 10-11 minutes. This will keep the interior of the cookie soft and chewy.

Cakes sink in the middle due to several factors, including overmixing of the batter, opening the oven door too soon, or not baking at the right temperature. Expired leavening agents or incorrect proportions of ingredients can also cause sinking.

The snickerdoodle dough can be sticky and tough to handle. I like to grease my hands with cooking spray so they are easier to handle. Refrigerate. Also, after you have rolled one tray of snickerdoodles, place it in the refrigerator for a few minutes.

Cream of tartar makes cookies chewy, as it precludes the sugar in the dough from crystalizing, which would lead to crispiness (ie: the opposite of chewiness).

Snickerdoodles might turn out hard if they are overbaked or if the dough is too dry.

The most common recipes that call for cream of tartar are those that call for egg whites to be whipped, like angel food cake, genoise cake, meringue, and macarons. Jampel says that is because cream of tartar works as an egg white stabilizer that increases both the volume and shelf life of the meringue.

When combined with baking soda, it becomes a leavening agent (the stuff that makes baked goods puff up in the oven) by producing carbon dioxide gas. If you ever run out of baking powder, you can substitute 1/4 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar for 1 teaspoon baking powder.