Best Snickerdoodle Cookies Recipe, Whats Cooking America (2024)

FAQs

Why don't my snickerdoodles crack? ›

If yours aren't cracking, your oven may not be hot enough or your ingredients may not be fresh enough! Are snickerdoodles supposed to be undercooked? I always recommend slightly underbaking your cookies and then letting them finish baking through cooling on the pan.

Why are my snickerdoodles flat? Snickerdoodles can come out flat if 1) the leaveners you used (for this recipe, it's both the baking soda and the cream of tartar) are on the old side and no longer work, and 2) if you baked them at a lower temperature.

Snickerdoodles might turn out hard if they are overbaked or if the dough is too dry. Be sure to keep an eye on them as they bake – when the edges are set but the centers are still soft and puffy, they are done. Also, make sure you're not adding too much flour.

You can either replace cream of tartar with baking powder at a 1:1.5 ratio (1 teaspoon cream of tartar : 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder), or you can replace cream of tartar with the combination of baking soda and either lemon juice or vinegar (as with this recipe).

What some taste as “bitterness” in snickerdoodles, others consider “tanginess”, and it comes from the metallic flavors of the cream of tartar and baking soda. If you're particularly sensitive to the tangy flavor, feel free to omit the cream of tartar.

What is a Good Replacement for Cream of Tartar? A good replacement for cream of tartar in baking is 1 teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice for every 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar.

They puff in the oven and then settle back down while cooling into a soft, thick, supremely chewy cookie with a gorgeous crinkly top. They've received nothing but rave reviews! Snickerdoodle is sort of a strange name, yes?

Bake the Snickerdoodles

When they're done, the snickerdoodles will be puffed, a parts of the cookie will look set. There will be parts that look a little doughy (the crinkles) and that is a good thing. Every oven is different, but in my oven I cannot bake them more than 10 minutes or they're overdone.

If you fail to add a teaspoon of baking soda or however much your recipe needs, the cookies won't have those bubbles inside them to rise up. If you forget to add the acid, too, the baking soda won't be able to react or produce carbon dioxide.

When cookie dough is too sticky, you may have an imbalance of wet and dry ingredients. You can fix this by adding a teaspoon of flour or cornstarch at a time until your dough is just how you want. The added flour or cornstarch will absorb the excess liquid and reduce the dough's overall stickiness.

What happens if you don't use cream of tartar? ›

In other applications where whipped whites provide structure, the meringue base would be weaker, and possibly collapse, without a stabilizer like cream of tartar.

The Best Substitute for Cream of Tartar

For every 1/2 teaspoon of cream of tartar in the recipe, use 1 teaspoon lemon juice or white vinegar. As an example, if your cookie recipe calls for 1 teaspoon baking soda, add 2 teaspoons lemon juice instead of the cream of tartar.

In some recipes, you can leave out cream of tartar if there is no suitable replacement. You can simply omit cream of tartar from the recipe if you're making whipped egg whites, syrups, frostings, or icings.

The most common culprit behind non-spreading cookies is too much flour. This may seem counterintuitive—after all, isn't flour a key ingredient in baking? Yes, but if you add too much flour, your cookies won't spread as they bake.