Snicker Snicker Snickerdoodles, Made with Almond Flour

I've made snickerdoodles for years, usually using a Joy of Cooking recipe. I remembered making them with almond flour a while back and thinking they tasted really good but I couldn't remember which recipe I'd found online. Easy enough, I should be able to search and find it, right?

But wait, I'm finding multiple recipes and can't tell which one I made. And they all have different ratios for the ingredients. Really different in terms of almond flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, and those are pretty important to cookie quality. A few even commit the cardinal sin of leaving out the cream of tartar, which is precisely what gives them their specific tangy goodness. Those recipes were nonstarters for me. They're just sugar cookies dipped in cinnamon and sugar, not true snickerdoodles.

I settled in and did what I usually do when confronted with conflicting recipes: I drew up a matrix to compare quantities, then decided what I'd go with for my version. I checked a couple of recipes that used regular flour just to compare the overall wet/dry ratios, recognizing that almond flour is higher in fat so regular flour would call for more butter or shortening.

The only good snickerdoodle is a bendy snickerdoodle. I'm not the only one who thinks so. All the recipes I consulted in my hunt for a good recipe using almond flour specifically noted the importance of having cookies that end up a bit crisped at the edges but still flexible in the middle. At least we all agree on that. That makes the baking technique important here: Preheat the oven, take the cookies out before they brown on top, and let them sit on the sheet for a bit more carryover baking from the heat in the cookie sheet before you take them off.

I'm sharing my own recipe first, then linking to the ones I used to develop this. They turned out great!

Almond Flour Snickerdoodles

Yield: Approximately 6 dozen cookies

Oven temperature: 350 degrees

1/2 c. unsalted butter

1/4 c. coconut oil (could use shortening, or all unsalted butter if you don't have either of those)

1/2 c. white sugar

1/2 c. brown sugar

2  large eggs

2 t. vanilla

3 c. almond flour

2 T. tapioca starch, cornstarch, or potato starch (adds stretchiness to the dough consistency)

 2 t. cream of tartar

1 t. baking soda

1-1/2 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. fine sea salt

To roll the dough balls in:

1/3 c. white sugar

1-1/2-2 t. cinnamon

1/8 t. nutmeg

Dash or two of cardamom (optional)

Cream together the white sugar, brown sugar, unsalted butter, and coconut oil until it looks light and fluffy. 

Beat in the eggs one at a time, making sure each egg is fully beaten in before moving on.

If you're a sifter you can sift the dry ingredients together and then add them to the batter. If you're like me you'll sprinkle them over the surface of the batter, doing your best not to leave a big clump of the leavening agents.

Mix together until blended. Don't overbeat. You should have a nice fluffy batter.

Chill the dough in the fridge for 15-30 minutes if you have time to do so. It will make it a bit easier to work with.

While the dough chills, heat the oven to 350 degrees and prep your cookie sheets with silicone mats or parchment lining.

Mix together the white sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom if you're using that in a small bowl.

Roll the dough into walnut-sized balls and roll these in the sugar/cinnamon mixture before placing them on the cookie sheet. They'll spread on their own into nice rounds.

Bake at 350 degrees for 9 minutes. Take them out of the oven and let them sit on the sheet for the carryover baking for another 5 minutes or so before moving them to a rack to finish cooling.

Enjoy!

Other Snickerdoodle Recipes

• Almond Flour Snickerdoodles (Grain-Free), Meaningful Eats: This recipe comes the closest to what I made but I couldn't just follow it. No cream of tartar! This omission is what sent me off in search of other sources.
• Almond Flour Snickerdoodles, Crumb Top Baking: Smaller amounts of everything; based on 2 cups of almond flour.
• Almond Flour Snickerdoodles, Gluten-Free, Vegan Richa: I'd try this one if I needed to make a vegan batch but I'd have to add cream of tartar. Even smaller quantities; based on 1 cup of almond flour.
• Keto Snickerdoodle Cookies, How to This and That: If you want to make a batch with an artificial sweetener this one might work for you.
• Soft & Thick Snickerdoodles, Sally's Baking Addiction: I turn to Sally pretty often. This is another 3-cup recipe, made with regular flour instead of almond flour.
• Snickerdoodle Cookie Recipe, Show Me the Farm: Made with 3 cups of regular flour.

Related Reading

• Seriously Good Oatmeal Cookie Recipe
• Classic All-Bran/Bran Buds Muffin Recipe: Best Bran Muffins Ever
• Keep that Streak Going: #30DaysOf Something that Matters to You (no recipes, but a peek at my snickerdoodle past)

How to End One Year and Begin Another

If our calendars made sense the new year would start the day after the December solstice. We make it through the shortest day and longest night (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere). We begin to turn toward the light, toward warmth, toward growth.

Or maybe instead of immediately writing a new date we would have a set of "un-days". Days that appear on no one's calendar (except those that bring you wages or benefits). Days with no work, no expectations. Time dedicated to wrapping things up, taking stock, making everything clean and organized or catching up on sleep. Whatever it takes to feel refreshed and recharged, ready to begin again.

We don't have that. Instead we have a hurly-burly of various traditions that mark the turn toward the light but in so doing create expectations and pressure.

Buy this, cook that. Wrap this, decorate that. Don't clean to create a fresh, calming space -- clean so that people can be impressed by your housekeeping and then mess it all up so you have it to do all over again.

That's what I grew up with. My mom created a beautiful Christmas every year with delicious food, she selected and wrapped gifts with care, she made dozens of cookies of various types to create those magazine-ready plates, she decorated the whole house and everything smelled good. She also didn't work full-time outside the home.

We're done with that model and it feels pretty damn good.

It helps not to have small children who are subjected to social pressure that creates expectations that fall on parents. We have grown kids who profess delight with the cash and gift cards and whatever we feel like cooking.

This year it isn't exactly a "help" that I ended up really sick with a respiratory flu the week before a planned two-week vacation. The days that had few meetings, that I would have spent writing and analyzing and dealing with the email backlog in peace and quiet, turned into days lying on the sofa with generic cough/flu syrup, a water bottle, my Kindle, and some pillows to soften my fall into the sleep that kept dragging me downward to the horizontal.

Oh well. It is what it is.

That's the key to my winter holiday plan: It is what it is.

Examples of what this looks like as I do the things I enjoy, maintain continuity with my memories in ways that work for who I am today, and keep it manageable:

No Christmas tree. 

Instead, Second Daughter and I spent a very pleasant day (on a weekend before the flu hit) going through the ornaments. I had accumulated a bunch I didn't really care about, and had some I got to give each of the kids a start on their own collection. We sorted these out and made a box for Youngest who wants to build up her collection.

I used the ones I like to decorate windowsills and hung them from lamps. We have a cheerfully decorated living space that will be easy to clean up and I emptied one of the storage boxes from the garage as part of my ongoing downsizing.

No giant spread of forty-'leven kinds of cookies. 

I experimented a week or so ago with a vegan shortcake. Pro tip: don't substitute ground almonds for part of the flour or you'll have a gooey something that tastes good but isn't shortcake. Next time I may try this cardamom snickerdoodle recipe instead.

While Second Daughter was there for the weekend I made a batch of cinnamon stars from the 1963 Betty Crocker Cookbook I grew up with because they sounded interesting and were pretty easy. I also made (with her help) the one cookie I'll make every year due to popular demand, the candy cane cookies topped with crushed peppermints/sugar from that same cookbook. Talking about this cookbook on Twitter led to a fun exchange.

My grown kids always request candy cane cookies, from this 1963 Betty Crocker cookbook. Fair amount of hand work for relatively few cookies but they're delicious. Making them this coming weekend. pic.twitter.com/8OeOFKSSsk

— Barb Chamberlain (@BarbChamberlain) December 8, 2019

It was my mom's and I baked out of it as a kid. I will own it until I die and will it to my children.

— Barb Chamberlain (@BarbChamberlain) December 8, 2019

In years past I've made spritz with my mom's old cookie press; frosted cookies that took forever and honestly were more interesting to look at than to eat and thus not worth the effort; snickerdoodles with green and red sprinkles because snickerdoodles are The Cookie for me as long as they're bendy in the middle; and various other treats.

Cooking what I feel like eating, spread over a few days instead of in one massive blowout that encourages overeating.

The flu is passing and cooking is one of my favorite things to do when I have a whole day and no time pressure. Yesterday I made a batch of Sarah Gailey's lasagna (did you know "lasagna" is the singular and "lasagne" is the plural?).

Today we made a grocery run to get ingredients for things I feel like cooking and eating over the next few days while Second Daughter hangs out for some cuddle time and Mom cooking. These recipes let me make maximum use of oven heat and will yield some leftovers I can freeze for future lunches. The list is likely to include:

• Portabello mushrooms stuffed with something along the lines of quinoa, sweet bell peppers, and pine nuts, topped with vegan romesco or muhamarra (it's a toss-up -- love them both)
• Roasted butternut squash with really good 25-year-old balsamic vinegar (the kind that pours like rich syrup, from The Oilerie in Burien where we did some tasting on one of our coffeeneuring dates as part of my birthday celebrating that stretched over a few weeks) and some chili garlic oil my younger sister gave me on one of our sisters' weekends, with the option of regular feta or a vegan feta I found in a nicely expanded vegan section at Fred Meyer
• Roasted broccoli because I love it
• Champagne mashed potatoes, another Sarah Gailey recipe she shared in a series of tweets starting with this one
• Waldorf salad with a vegan cashew cream dressing (the one from the recipe below) or the yogurt-based dressing from this vegan Waldorf salad recipe
• Vegan broccoli/red grape salad with dressing options: Thai peanut or a balsamic vinaigrette because I have those on hand. To this recipe I always add shredded red cabbage, grated carrots, and some diced sweet bell peppers in various colors. It's beautiful and tasty.
• Southern lemon pie with a saltine cracker crust that I'm going to try converting to vegan. I link to the NPR story with the recipe because that's what got me started making this. I found a recipe for vegan sweetened condensed (coconut) milk and picked up some vegan spread to use in the crust in place of butter.
• Vegan cream of mushroom soup. Super simple and so delicious. Last time I made this I had some cauliflower I needed to use up. I boiled that and a few potatoes, pureed them in the food processor with some homemade veggie broth, and made that part of the creamy base for the soup. It was fantastic. I add celery to this recipe.
• Decidedly unvegan cornbread from an old New York Times Magazine recipe that involves pouring whipping cream into the middle to create a custardy center, baked in a heated cast iron pan for a crispy crust.
• Vegan nog, which takes all of about 5 minutes because I have nut milk and coconut milk on hand and make cashew cream ahead and keep it in the freezer

This sounds like a lot. But my mom would have done something like this list plus a turkey, gravy, three more kinds of pie, glazed carrots, peas and mushrooms in a wine sauce, and rolls, all for one day in which she also trotted out at least half a dozen homemade hors d'oeuvres platters and the forty-leven cookie varieties.

I'm doing my cooking spread out over at least two days, maybe three. And this list is only one in my head, not something to which I've committed that a dozen or more people will show up to eat at a specific date and time.

No gift shopping on a timeline. Don't get me wrong; I love giving gifts. I like giving them at times people aren't expecting them as a "just because".

I don't ignore the gift-giving element at this time of year; I'm enough of a product of my upbringing that it would feel pretty cold not to give a gift now. But it's sure easier when I don't have to fight people at the mall.

I gave Eldest Daughter and her beau a movie gift card early so they could use it for the Star Wars opening and they now have half a dozen or so movie dates to look forward to. (She also got dental work paid for, which is a little challenging to wrap....) Second Daughter is going to get a shopping expedition to prepare her for some international travel with things she needs (or things I think she needs, like mosquito netting and a rechargeable flashlight -- shhh, don't tell her). Engineering Student Son gets a gift certificate for the online gaming platform he frequents. Youngest Daughter -- yep, another gift certificate.

Seriously, I remember the year my mom finally gave up trying to guess at my personal style and instead just sent me downtown with her credit cards as one of the best Christmases ever so this is not a copout, this is responsive parenting.

As for Sweet Hubs, the other thing I did to make the end of the old year and the beginning of the new year pretty perfect was to book a getaway to the hotel where we spent our honeymoon. We'll celebrate our date-a-versary there: the 14th anniversary of our first date, which happens to fall on my parents' wedding anniversary. We'll have a fireplace, a spa tub, a view of the ocean, and no expectations other than being together.

That's how to end the old year and start the new year. Relaxed, happy, content, in love. It is what it is.

25 Random Things About Me, in Random Order

Image via Wikipedia

Yes, I got tagged with this in Facebook originally. As long as I was free-associating, I thought I'd put it up here, in my ongoing quest to be myself.

1. I would want Jodie Foster to play me in my bio-pic.


2. I have never learned to do cartwheels. Probably won’t, at this rate.
   
   
3. Once upon a time, I could name all of Henry VIII’s wives in order, and tell you how each marriage ended.
   
   
4. I was born on Election Day.


5. My mother voted absentee a few days before that, having given up on the belief that she would ever have me because I was born a month overdue.


6. I’ve worn glasses since I was 5. I had radial keratotomy when I was 20, which corrected my vision for a while, but it didn’t last. I wear contacts most of the time because I'm vain.


7. Back when I worked as a Kelly temp, I typed around 110 words per minute with almost zero errors.
8. I used to be a member of Mensa. At the first meeting I attended, I met the man who would become my first husband (but not my last, nor my second-to-last). Draw your own conclusions about my intelligence.


9. My dad’s birthday is Nov. 3. Mine is Nov. 6. My oldest daughter’s is Nov. 12. If she ever has children, she has to have one born Nov. 24 to continue the pattern.


10. I think my daughters are really, really amazingly wonderful.


11. My longest one-day bike mileage (so far) is 94, when we did Tour des Lacs in 2007. (This is a beautiful ride from Spokane into Idaho and back. If you're a cyclist, come check it out!)


12. I used to read enormous amounts of science fiction and fantasy, and at one point subscribed to 3 science fiction magazines (Asimov's, Analog, and Aboriginal, which no longer exists).


13. Every single time I have ever tried to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey all the way through, I have fallen asleep.


14. When my second mother-in-law died of lung cancer I was there with the rest of the family. It was amazing and intense and exhausting, and after she died she was so beautiful, like marble.


15. I was captain of our High School Bowl team. This was a quiz show hosted by a local TV station, kind of like Jeopardy.


16. When I tore my hamstring a few years ago doing yoga, it sounded like a rifle shot. (Yes, I still do yoga.)


17. When I bought my first PC in about 1986, I stayed up late many nights writing DOS *.BAT files for fun.


18. I object to raisins in cookies. They are just masquerading as chocolate chips to deceive the nearsighted.


19. I’m subject to vertigo attacks that make me feel as if I have the drunk whirlies, without benefit (or enjoyment) of alcohol.
    
    
20. Sometimes when I sleep, my eyes are open—just a little. This is apparently very creepy. At a sleepover birthday party in my childhood, two of my friends thought I was dead.


21. My college nickname was Greenie because there was a Barb Green going through sorority rush at the same time and I was Barb Greene-with-an-E.


22. I went to a Seventh Day Adventist school for first grade because my birthday was after the cutoff date for Idaho public school. Once I was a bona fide first grade graduate, the public school could take me for second grade. Go figure.


23. Unless I go back to before I started 4-H and Bluebirds in about second or third grade, I can’t remember a period in my life when I was not involved in some kind of group, committee, board, or other volunteer or civic activity.


24. As far as I know, I’m not allergic to any foods or medications. I’ve had morphine once and it nauseated me but that’s about it.


25. I once had a poem published in one of those books they try to get you to buy after accepting your work for publication. I may still have my copy somewhere around here….
    


26. Bonus item: I am (finally) married to the love of my life, after learning a lot (I hope--and he hopes!) in my first two marriages. Third time IS the charm, for me at least.

For Someone Who’s Supposed to Be So Smart… Ways in Which I’m Stupid

My father has a way with words. Now, he’d be the first to tell you that with my mother around, he doesn’t get much chance to talk. “She talks enough for the both of us,” I heard more than once. And yes, Mom could at times serve as the prototype for Chatty Cathy.

Dad didn’t talk at length, the way she did. So when he spoke, his pronouncements carried more weight. Sometimes we almost jumped when he spoke because it was unexpected, another country heard from.

And of course, he was DAD. I grew up at the time when “Wait ‘til your father gets home” had serious meaning, and you’d really, really rather suffer Mom’s discipline than Dad’s. (Although her line, “I’m so disappointed in you,” did carry a stinging power. I want to know how to sink that same emotional hook deep into the guts of my two daughters so I can tug on it when I need to.)

Some of Dad’s memorable pronouncements fall into the category of folksy sayings, like “Whatever smokes your drawers.”

Another line of his—possibly reserved for me personally among his six children: “For someone who’s supposed to be so smart, you don’t have much horse sense.”

This pronouncement was not without merit, I have to admit.

One summer I had the use of Middle Older Brother’s Datsun pick-up while he traveled for work. Somehow the whole idea of adding oil to the engine had never been made clear to me. The engine seized up once and for all on I-90 as I merrily zoomed eastward to go hang out at Lake Coeur d’Alene.

A passing semi-truck driver gave me a lift (this was in pre-cell-phone days, of course) and I called my parents for rescue. The engine was toast. This was the kind of episode that might induce the unfavorable comparison to four-legged hay burners.

I’m a little better at routine vehicle fluids now (although Sweet Husband takes care of it for me, I do know it’s supposed to happen and I had my car serviced regularly before he was on the scene). There are still some ways in which I lack horse sense though:

• Leaving valuables in plain sight on the front seat. I believe most people are honest, and so far no one has broken into the car to take anything. Someday I will be wrong about this.
• Being quite sure that even when the fuel indicator is on the red line, I have enough fuel to get to the next available gas station. So far, this has been true. Good thing I mostly commute by bike or bus.
• Doing “one more thing” before leaving for something: Work, a meeting, a date, a doctor’s appointment for one of the girls. I know-know-KNOW that when I squeeze in one more e-mail response or chore I make us all late. I know that. But surely there’s time for just one more thing?
• Believing against all evidence of the past that the regular consumption of giant snickerdoodles (only ones baked perfectly so they’re still bendy in the middle, of course) has no effect on my weight.
• Thinking that since there’s plenty of time before the project is due, I don’t need to start now. (Love the adrenaline arising from artificially induced deadline pressure through procrastination--and there are always a lot of things on the list that do have to happen before the deadline for this item.)
• Failing to write down things that family members tell me about appointments and tasks, despite the fact that I do this faithfully at work and for all volunteer efforts. I have notebooks stretching back over 5 years, a simple system of stick-ums to flag items for follow-up, and a fairly systematic use of Outlook calendar and tasks to move things along. Family items, not so much, & thus I forget plans and projects that involve my loved ones.

Looking at this list, I notice a continued carelessness toward vehicles (possibly scarred by that little Datsun episode). Definitely a disregard for the passage of time as measured by standard devices, which after all are made by humans and have little to do with the actual workings of the universe. Perhaps a certain childlike belief in magical thinking.

It’s not that I lack horse sense, Dad—it’s that I believe in fairies. I do believe, I do believe, I do I do I do.

Seriously good oatmeal cookie recipe

These are not your ordinary oatmeal cookies. For one thing, they don't have those nasty raisins in them--those squished-bug-like raisins that exist only to deceive the nearsighted into believing they're about to bite into a chocolate chip cookie. For another, they are more crispy than chewy, with a delicate consistency similar to sugar cookies. As far as I know, the recipe has been in my mother's recipe box since before I was born, labeled BEST Oatmeal Cookies. She was right.

I have updated the recipe based on extensive (ahem) experimentation. Originally it called for a 50/50/split of white/brown sugar; I have tilted it toward brown for richness and moisture. I've added several spices; the original recipe only involved the cinnamon/sugar coating in the last step. The're fantastic without the spices so no need to fret; use or leave out and you'll have addictively good cookies either way.

Advice from experience: Double this recipe. You won't be sorry.

Better than Best Oatmeal Cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together:
1 c. butter (don’t use shortening—it makes all the difference in the world! And for even more amazing flavor, brown the butter first. If you want to make this vegan, use coconut oil and a vegan flax or chia egg in place of the egg below.)
1/2 c. white sugar
1 c. brown sugar
1 egg (okay to use egg substitute for a vegan version, but if you’re a vegan you’ll miss the buttery goodness mentioned above)
1 t. vanilla

Sift together, then add to the creamed mix:
1-1/2 c. whole wheat pastry flour (yes, you can use white if you must)
1 t. soda
¼ t. salt
¼ t. nutmeg
½ t. cinnamon
Optional: 2 T. ground flaxseed (adds omega 3 for vegetarians)
Optional additional spices: 1/4 t. each ginger, mace; dash cloves.

Stir in:
1-1/2 c. rolled oats
¾ c. finely chopped walnuts and/or pecans

Prepare a bowl of cinnamon/sugar
1/3 c. white sugar
1+ t. cinnamon (keep adding cinnamon until you get the color you want--darker if you want a heavier hit of cinnamon, but if you've added the spices above you don't need too much)

Roll dough into balls the size of small walnuts, then roll in the cinnamon/sugar mix.

Use parchment to line the cookie sheets if you have it--handy stuff! If you don't have it, grease the cookie sheet.

Place on cookie sheet and flatten gently with your thumb or the bottom of a glass. They do spread some so don't crowd.

Bake at 350 degrees for 7-9 minutes; start with 7 to test your oven. Then hide a batch for your snacking pleasure before you give your family a taste. In my oven when I first posted this recipe 8 minutes brought them to perfection; I now have a new oven in a different house and I bake them for 7 minutes.

If you put two cookie sheets in the oven at once, then halfway through rotate the pans top/bottom and front/back for more even heat distribution.

After you take the pans out, let them sit for 1-2 minutes before removing from the pan. This allows them to set up; if you try to take them off the pan too soon they'll be floppy and tear apart.