Pepperidge Farm Snickerdoodles

My mom is not a baker and dislikes being in the kitchen... except for when she's doing the eating and not the cooking. I guess I am making up for lost time by baking all the things I never got to eat as a kid because of my mom's aversion to cooking. Instead, we got well acquainted with the cookie aisle. For the longest time I never knew people could actually make their own cookies in their own ovens. I'm not kidding when I say that my mom used our oven as storage space until I began taking an interest in baking.

If you've followed me for a while now you'll probably have noticed that I'm a fan of copycat recipes. A light bulb went on while typing this. Maybe I seek out clones of famous foods the same way people hold onto their grandmother's cherished pound cake recipe or secret family recipes because those mass produced flavors are what I grew up on. Taste evokes memories.

These cinnamon and sugar topped snickerdoodles are one of Pepperidge Farm's soft cookies that can be duplicated at home with the same taste and chewy consistency. One tip for creating any chewy cookie is using melted butter. When butter melts the water separates from the fat and combines with the flour in the dough to develop more gluten for a chewier finished product. It's also very important to get these cookies out of the oven when they are just slightly browned and still soft. If you store the cooled cookies in an airtight container, you'll have soft snickerdoodles for as long as the cookies last (which probably won't be long).

Pepperidge Farm Snickerdoodles
Makes 16 | adapted from Top Secret Recipes

1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Use an electric mixer on medium speed to combine butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla in a medium bowl until smooth.
3. In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.
4. Mix the dry ingredients into the butter mixture on low speed until dough is smooth.
5. Mix topping ingredients together in a small bowl.
6. Measure one heaping tablespoon of the dough and roll it into a ball with your hands.
7. Press half of the cookie dough ball into the cinnamon/sugar. Place the ball, sugared-side-up, on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 16 minutes or until cookies just begin to turn light brown. Be careful not to bake the cookies too long, or they won't be soft. Remove from the pan before they harden completely. Store air tight.