Monday, December 15, 2014

"Amish" Snickerdoodles

For this year's Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, I wanted to incorporate the Amish Friendship Bread Starter and surprisingly, there are many cookie recipes that use the starter! The one that stood out to me in the long list of recipes were Snickerdoodles. I love Snickerdoodles and I don't make them often enough. The cinnamon-y goodness is one that is welcome at any time of the year. I decided not to mess with the recipe and stick with a traditional Snickerdoodle taste (besides the fact that I used the starter).

"Amish" Snickerdoodles

For the ones above, I baked them on the top rack and for the ones below, I baked on the bottom rack.

"Amish" Snickerdoodles

It's really weird how the two batches yielded different results despite being from the same recipe. The ones on the bottom ended up a little burnt on the bottom so I didn't send those out. The bottom ones had a thicker and more cake-like texture compared to the others but both were still delicious. I didn't quite get 60 from the recipe as the original states but I still got quite a bit. I would say about 4 dozen.

Ready for delivery

I am so glad I got to participate in the Cookie Swap again. This is the part I love about baking: sharing! I get to share a lot of my baking and cooking with other people in my life all the time, but this is even more special because I get to put a smile on a complete stranger's face. Who doesn't love getting cookies in the mail?! I loved writing a message to each one of my matches, choosing the containers for the cookies, and wrapping them, hoping at every moment that the presentation and results would be good enough for my matches. I know when I received each of my 3 cookie packages, I got really excited. My eyes widened as I opened my mailbox and I had obsessively checked my mail every day to see if I had gotten another one yet. And I normally check my mail once a week! (Yeah, I'm popular.) Here are the lovely cookies that I received from my three matches:

Glazed Butter Cookies from KoKo at KoKo Likes - these melt in your mouth! I love the gold specks too.

Gold-Speckled Glazed Butter Cookies

Caramel Studded Snickerdoodles from Renee of Awesome on 20 - great minds think alike! I love Snickerdoodles! What a cool twist too with caramel. I have never thought to mess with the classic but this is great.

Caramel Studded Snickerdoodles

Pina Colada Cookies from Andrea at Recipes for Divine Living. Love the tropical twist!

Pina Colada Cookies

Hope you think about joining next year if you have a food blog yourself! I can't wait for another round of baking and sharing in 2015.

"Amish" Snickerdoodles
Adapted from Friendship Bread Kitchen

1 cup Amish Friendship Bread Starter
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cream of tartar
4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375° F (190° C).

In a large mixing bowl, add in wet ingredients. Mix in rest of ingredients except the last sugar and cinnamon.

In a small bowl, mix together the sugar and cinnamon. Add more sugar or cinnamon depending on your preferences.

Shape dough into 1 inch balls. The dough will be a little sticky! Roll balls in cinnamon-sugar mixture. Place them 2 inches apart on cookie sheet.

Bake 10 minutes. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

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