- Snickerdoodles
- My grandmother’s cream cheese and walnut cookies
- Pfeffernusse
You had me excited for a second. But that’s just cinnamon-spiked vanilla ice cream with oatmeal cookies. The only thing that has to do with snickerdoodles is the cinnamon, I guess. It’s like that Dunkin Donuts snickerdoodle cronut they’ve had this fall. I’m not sure what in the hell it has to do with a snickerdoodle, as it tastes nothing like one. Is “snickerdoodle” now the new word for anything flavored with cinnamon.
It’s a tossup between chocolate chip and snickerdoodles, with my oatmeal-raisin-pecan at a close 3rd. Add molasses cookies to those 3 and you now know what I’m taking to the inlaws’ for Christmas! 
One. Chocolate chip.
Two. Chocolate chip.
Three. Chocolate chip.
These are basically pretentious chocolate chip cookies, but they’re very good and festive:
White chocolate and Cranberry Cookies
You guys have me wanting some Snickerdoodles!
Hmmm. Then I don’t think I’ve had a snickerdoodle cookie. Do you have a favorite recipe?
Here’s a link to the Mrs. Sigg’s Snickerdoodles recipe I mentioned. The key to me in a snickerdoodle is that it needs to have some chew to it (not be completely crispy, but more like a little crispness on the edges, but pliable, maybe even pillowy (although I’m not sure that’s exactly the right word for the texture), in the middle) and have a tang to them from the cream of tartar. You can also read about them here. They are not the same made with commercial baking powders; they need to be a mix of cream of tartar and baking soda. Also, that recipe I linked to uses a 50-50 mix of butter and vegetable shortening, but you can use all butter if you wish. I like the texture better with the 50/50 mix of both. When you take them out of the oven, they may look a little bit underdone and fragile–they are somewhat delicate, but when they cool they firm up without getting hard.
The ice cream sandwich sounds more like it should be called an oatmeal cookie ice cream sandwich as, well, it’s made with oatmeal and cinnamon, which is a common ingredient in oatmeal cookies. Oatmeal has nothing to do with snickerdoodles.
I can’t post the soft gingersnap molasses cookies until I can get to work. But I know the monster cookie recipe by heart. Amounts may seem odd, I work in large batches by weight mostly, so if you have any questions just ask. Also, they have the virtue of being gluten free.
Monster cookies
3 eggs
8 ounces brown sugar(1-1/8 cups)
7 ounces white sugar(1 cup)
14-3/4 ounces oatmeal
1/2 tablespoon vanilla
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 ounces butter or margarine
12 ounces peanut butter
4 ounces each chocolate chips and M&M’s
This recipe is unusual in that you mix all the ingredients together at the same time, except for the candies. If you have a mixer with a paddle attachment that’s great. When the stuff is evenly mixed add the candies and mix until evenly distributed. Scoop to desired size on a baking sheet, either greased or paper lined, and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until somewhat browned. They don’t change color much until they are overdone, so be careful.
Sugar cut out cookies with royal icing
Chocolate chip
Shortbread
Pepparkakor
Chocolate Chip
Tiny Toffee Squares (family recipe - my mom used to make them all the time - I’ll be making some this weekend.)
My mother made those every Christmas, and they were my favorite.
For non-Christmas cookies, nothing beats Toll House. Use the recipe on the bag.
What are called in my family ‘Sally Ranger cookies’ or ‘cake mix cookies’.
1 yellow cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup cooking oil, not olive.
A little of everything in your cookie making bucket*, usual for us will be:
coconut, chocolate chips, chopped dried cherries or cranberries, chopped pecans or walnuts, chopped dried apricots, anything else we find that might belong in a cookie, like oatmeal, (or not).
*yes, we keep a 1 gal. bucket (with a lid) in the pantry with bags of coconut, pecans, etc. in it in case of cookie emergencies.
Lemon cookies
Sugar cookies using the recipe I bake cookies with for the holidays.
You make cookies out of a dog?
In the spirit of friendship and for the sake of cookie eaters everywhere, please remember to include SALT in your cookies! If you’re using a recipe that doesn’t include salt, well, that’s a bad recipe. Either find a new one, or chuck some salt in there. Every single kind of cookie is infinitely tastier with salt.
(I had a colleague once who was very keen on baking, and would make a big mixed selection of cookies for all her friends and family every year. I was excited to see my own little package, and thanked her profusely. When I got home, I tasted one after another, and every single cookie was completely unsalted. They tasted like sadness.)
Personally, I prefer not to make or eat cookies with shortening. Butter is better. But I know some people can’t get the results they want without the textural properties that shortening gives. My MIL makes gingersnaps that I just can’t eat any more, nasty greasy mouthfeel…
No Bakes
Not necessarily. If it’s got salted butter in it, it should be salty enough (in my experience.) I only find the need to add salt if I use unsalted butter (which is all I use these days, anyway, since I find it easier to control salt levels that way.)
Oatmeal Scotchies! Yummmms! I make them every year. Every time I’ve told people about them, they look at me like I’m crazy, but then they like them. Recipe-wise? Find an oatmeal cookie recipe. Instead of chocolate chips or nuts? Put butterscotch chips. (They’re just like chocolate chips.)
Very hard to choose because I love them all and it just depends on my mood.
But I guess these would be my top three.
Oreo
Chocolate Chip
Oatmeal Raisin