Mini Snickerdoodle Cookies w/Chocolate Glaze Drizzle

Snickerdoodle cookies are very tricky to make. It's a 'wet' dough that sticks to everything! It has to be chilled (I chose to freeze it rather than refrigerate the dough as that kept it solid long enough for me to work with it) before you can bake it. The Recipe I used was as follows:

Ingredients:
*1 cup butter (I substituted margarine)
*1 1/2 cups sugar (I have made them with both regular sugar and brown sugar)
*2 large eggs 
*2 3/4 cups flour
* 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 
*1 teaspoon baking soda 
*1/4 teaspoon salt
*3 tablespoons sugar (Again you can decide regular or brown sugar)
*3 teaspoons cinnamon

Directions:

Mix butter (or margarine), 1 1/2 cups sugar and eggs thoroughly in a large bowl with a hand mixer.

Combine flour (which should be sifted), cream of tartar, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl.

Blend dry ingredients into butter mixture.

Chill dough, and chill an ungreased cookie sheet for about 10-15 minutes in the fridge. When you put the dough in to chill preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Meanwhile, mix 3 tablespoons sugar, and 3 teaspoons cinnamon in a small bowl. (you can use less cinnamon according to taste)

Scoop 1-2 inch balls of dough, place in the sugar/ cinnamon mixture. (1 inch balls make mini cookies)

Coat by gently rolling balls of dough in the sugar-cinnamon mixture.

Place on chilled ungreased cookie sheet, and bake 10 minutes.

Remove from pan immediately.

After the cookies had fully cooled I took some Duncan Hines Chocolate Amazing Glaze (http://www.duncanhines.com/products/glazes) microwaved it as instructed, then with all the cookies very close together on several overlays of wax paper, drizzled the glaze across the cookies. Store in a covered container, stacking won't be possible with the glaze as it remains sticky. You may also want to refrigerate before traveling with them, I did.

                                                                           Enjoy! ~ Sarah E. Lynch

I Bake, Therefore I Am!

I will tell you right from the start, I am not a talented writer. I've written my fair share of poetry and greeting card-esque passages, all decently prosed. But when it comes to writing news articles, stories, novels, etc... Well I leave a lot to be desired to say the least. 

But something I can do fairly well is Bake. Now don't take that the wrong way, that is to say, I can't cook. Well I can cook a slight number of things, but not enough to make a whole weeks worth of decent, edible meals. But when I bake something in the universe upends itself and allows me to make some delicious treats without me knowing exactly how I am capable of baking and following detailed recipes, but not being able to cook detailed meals.

Yesterday I was at Goodwill and looking through the cookbooks. I love finding cookbooks solely about baking, I have begun to have a slight addiction to buying them. Well of course yesterday was no different. I found two books I just had to have. The first (and the one I am most excited about): Gourmet's Best Desserts. The second: Readers Digest; Cakes, 1,001 Classic Recipes from Around the World.

Gourmet Best Desserts was published in 1987. Looking through the 500-odd pages I am feeling slightly daunted. I am in no way a professional baker or pastry chef, and many of those recipes are very detailed and intricate. But also the book includes tips, tricks, explanations of techniques that you are going to need to use. So I am excited to dive in and attempt most of the recipes on my own.

Cakes, 1,001 Classic Recipes was published in 2003. And its pretty much your straight forward recipe book. No tips, tricks or techniques listed for information on how to perform said recipes. But a good cookbook I think to have for reference when needing to make someone a sweet treat for a special occasion.

For awhile now this Blog has sat lonely and empty. I couldn't figure out just what to blog about. But right now all I can think about is baking. I've wanted to own my own bakery or bakery styled food cart for a year or two now. But as I am not anywhere close to be being in a position to having either of those things, this Blog will have to do for now. I guess it will be my baking journal of sorts. Right now I only mainly have the web cam for pictures, so most pictures I will include for now will be lower quality than I would like. But hopefully sooner rather than later I will be able to purchase a camera.


So thats my Blog entry for today. Short and Sweet. Check back later for updates on how my self-taught baking lessons are going!
                                                                                                       ~Sarah E. Lynch