Christmas Baking: Gingerdoodles

Who is huge on gingerbread cookies? How about Snickerdoodles? I, myself, are a huge fan of both so finding this recipe called Gingerdoodles and doing it was a no-brainer. How could this combination be wrong? It could only turn out to be epic and delicious 🙂

Fresh out of the oven!

The Gingerdoodle recipe I used can be found here: http://www.bakedbyrachel.com/2013/12/gingerdoodle-cookies/

I made a few modifications. First, I don’t have cream of tartar so I didn’t put any.  No substitute either, which makes me wonder all the time about what difference would it make. Do you know? Second, I don’t have ground cloves so I used allspice instead.  Its supposed to be able to substitute each other quite well.

Gingerdoodles

The taste was pretty good, however, for me, since I don’t eat sweets a lot was verging on the sweet side. I’ll definitely do this again and I’ll put less sugar, probably granulated one.  The texture is wonderful though.  It has a gingerbread consistency with a stronger snickerdoodle taste with cinnamon and other spices.  Its pretty awesome. What I mean is that its chewy (like soft chocolate chip cookies), especially the day after.

I think I’ll be using this recipe more.  Snickerdoodles are fantastic but this combination is even better.  Although, I’m having a  crazy urge to make some gingerbread cookies since I have these ultra cute Christmas cutters, that I used last year HERE!

Of course, expect that this isn’t quite was easy since it has a lot more ingredients to do and mixing in different time, kneading the dough and then refrigerating it for an hour or two.  Its a lot more time consuming, but if you mixed with another recipe like I did, then it’ll work out great.  The wait time will feel really little.

What do you think of this combination? Genius? Crazy? Would you try it out?

Another recipe coming up in a few hours! 🙂 Drop by again if you aren’t busy with Christmas eve festivities.

Happy Christmas Eve everyone! 🙂

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes!

After talking about it for 2 weeks, I finally opened up my new cookbook and got back into the baking world 🙂 Suffice to say, it was a very pleasant and relaxing experience for me. Man, did I miss it so much! After flipping through The Big Book of Cupcakes, I chose to do the Snickerdoodle Cupcakes! If you haven’t seen or tasted Snickerdoodles, you can head on right over HERE to check out the ones I made and the recipe if you’d like to try it out because they have heavenly!

Snickerdoodle cupcakes

The recipe is from Betty Crocker’s The Big Book of Cupcakes!

Makes 24 cupcakes

 

Ingredients

Cupcakes:

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour

3 tsps baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3/4 cup shortening or butter

1 2/3 cups sugar

5 egg whites

2 1/2 tsps vanilla

1 1/4 cups milk

Cinnamon Frosting:

6 cups powdered sugar

2 tsps ground cinnamon

2/3 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 tbsp vanilla

2-4 tbsps milk

Topping:

2 tsps granulated sugar

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

1) Heat oven to 350F.  Place paper baking cups in each of the regular-sized muffin cups.

2) In medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon; set aside

3) In large bowl, beat shortening with electric mixer on medium speed 30 seconds. Gradually add sugar, about 1/3 cup at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping bowl occasionally.  Beat 2 minutes longer.  Add egg whites, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Beat in vanilla.  On low speed, alternately add flour mixture, about 1/3 of mixture at a time, and milk, about 1/2 at a time, beating just until blended.

4) Divide batter evenly among muffin cups, filling each about 2/3 full.

5) Bake 18 to 20 minutes.  Cool in pans 5 minutes.  Remove cupcakes from pans; place on cooling racks to cool.

6) Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix powdered sugar, 2 tsp cinnamon and butter with electric mixer on low speed.  Stir in vanilla and 2 tbsp of milk.  Gradually beat in enough remaining milk, 2 tsp at a time, to make frosting smooth and spreadable.

7) Frost cupcakes.  In small bowl, mix topping ingredients; sprinkle over frosted cupcakes.

My modifications from the original recipe above! For starters, my cupcake was just a white cupcake, because of the setup of the book, I totally forgot I had to add in cinnamon.  Silly and forgetful, I know! I used shortening instead of butter and milk was replaced with unsweetened vanilla-flavored almond milk.  This helped as I ran out of vanilla during this recipe. For the frosting, I used butter and also decreased to 4 cups powdered sugar as I know it always is way too sweet (for me).  Also, I used 3 tbsp of milk approximately to make the frosting a nice texture.

 

The result was great! The frosting was a perfect sweetness balanced with the delicious and fluffy white cupcake.  The snickerdoodle taste was definitely there.  It was relatively easy to make.  I did have to make two different batches.  However, it was definitely worth it! Smelled awesome and tasted delicious!

I promise I’m back with more baking, k? Just needed to get back in the groove 😉 I already have my next dessert figured out! 🙂

SNICKERDOODLES

I’m back with more Christmas baking! Anyone down for some snickerdoodles?

Just the name itself is PURE AWESOMENESS, right? I ended up with exactly as they predicted, about 4 dozen.

Almost all Christmas cookbooks include a Snickerdoodle recipe.  The one I used was from Betty Crocker Christmas Cookbook.

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened

1/2 cup shortening

2 eggs

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup sugar

1 tbsp ground cinnamon

DIRECTIONS:

1) Heat oven to 400F .  In large bowl, beat 1 1/2 cups sugar, the butter, shortening and eggs with electric mixer on medium speed, or mix with spoon.  Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt.

2) Shape dough into 1 1/4 inch balls.  In small bowl, mix 1/4 cup sugar and the cinnamon.  Roll balls in cinnamon-sugar mixture.  On ungreased cookie sheet, place balls 2 inches apart.

3) Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until set, immediately remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

As usual, I change it a bit to my own needs.  First of all, I don’t eat cream of tartar so I omitted that.  I use margarine instead of butter and also I learned that an electric mixer usually leads to a better mixture especially when shortening and butter/margarine is in the picture.  Its a personal preference.  Also, I did a guesstimate on the cinnamon-sugar mixture, but more on the sugar portion because I had already put the measuring cup to wash in the sink.

They turned out amazing.  Seriously, look at them.  I did almost equal size cookies and they came out to 3.5 dozen cookies.  In the book, they expect about 4 dozens, so I’d say I’m spot on.  The taste and texture is really good.  If you don’t like too much sweets, then ton down the cinnamon-sugar mix so that the coating will lessen on the sweet taste.  I  had to do this in two batches and my second batch was less sweet because I had done that but it still tasted pretty awesome.

These are perfect for the holiday season! |They take about 10 minutes in the oven and prep work is quick.  Plus, the taste is delicious.

Have you ever made/tried snickerdoodles? Do you like them? Will you be making any this year?