Never Again

My sister is in town and she came over Tuesday night to see Laura and her family one last time before the Read's left yesterday morning. We made dinner for everyone, and invited a few extras over for good measure. Laura's first question was "what will we make for dessert?" LynnEl asked that we keep things "simple" so we were going to make strawberry shakes for dessert, and I made some Snickerdoodles to go with the shakes. It turned out that after dinner was over, everyone was too full for shakes, but luckily they'd eaten some of the cookies before dinner was served! Life is uncertain- eat dessert first! Great motto.
I whipped up my normal Snickerdoodle recipe, but I've been wanting to add a secret something for a long time. They turned out so great that my other sister gave them a 10 out of 10, and then my niece agreed they definitely were a 10, but then changed her mind and said they were a 15 out of 10. Maybe she isn't a math whiz, but in my book that makes these a winner. This isn't the post I was planning to put up today, but I told my friend I'd post this instead today just for her. Here you go, Michele!

Do you see the little dark spots on the cookie? Those are bursts of cinnamon that put this cookie over the top! YUM.
So what is it? These little mini cinnamon chips that I bought awhile ago from here.
These are so much better than cinnamon chips you can get from the grocery store. I think the ones from the store taste a little waxy. I'll never make Snickerdoodles again without throwing in a handful of these babies.

Snickerdoodle Cookies (original recipe is in the family cookbook on page 294)

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup shortening

1 1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 3/4 cups flour

2 tsp cream of tartar (thanks for saving me on that one, Sister)

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup of Cinnamon Burst baking chips

cinnamon sugar (about 3 T sugar to 1 T cinnamon)

Heat oven to 365°F. I know, it's weird, but it works.

Mix butter, shortening, sugar and eggs for a couple of minutes. Stir together the flour, cream of tartar, soda and salt and add it to the butter mixture. Stir in the chips. Shape dough into balls (I used my small cookie scoop) and roll in cinnamon sugar mixture. Bake cookies on parchment-lined baking sheets for 8 minutes. The cookies won't look like they are done, but once you take them out and let them cool for a bit on the sheet before removing them to a cooling rack, they'll be perfect. If you over-bake your Snickerdoodle, you'll be sorry because it will be too crunchy. You've got to have the crunchy-chewy factor or why bother, right? Bud has told me before that he thought my Snickerdoodles were too sweet. Guess what he ate for dinner last night while I was away at Enrichment? Snickerdoodles. More than one. That's just not like him, so go figure.