Salted Snickerdoodles

This is the recipe that started me on salt with my desserts.

This snickerdoodle recipe is melt in your mouth, cinnamon and sugar heaven.  The snickerdoodle itself is firm enough to hold, but once you bite into it, the soft inside just melts in your mouth. 

And now it is sprinkled with sea salt.

(It is not sprinkled with sprinkles however.  I know it is totally not fair to put sprinkles in a photo of a sprinkle-less cookie.  It just isn't.  However, my lighting was horrible, I was running out of time, and I had no good ideas for props.  None.  So sprinkles saved the day!  But they aren't in the cookies.  #foodbloggerproblems)

 

Have you ever found a product that you just fell in love with instantly?  I've had that moment several times this week.  But after telling Mom how much I liked this mini wheat crunch cereal, she kind of laughed and told me they were discontinuing it.  Oh, ok.  I guess that happens.  But then it happened again.  And then again!  I was complaining to Mom everything I like no one else does.  She told me maybe that says something about my taste.

Burn. (It was really funny actually)

Thank goodness salt is not one of those products.  Take away my cereal, my granola bars, my pasta sauce, but leave me my salt, okay?

(It really bugs me that this picture doesn't match the others, but oh well, it was the sharpest)

Salt and sugar - I thought they shouldn't be best friends and so I kept them separated lo these many years. 

But, I had a spontaneous baking time with my friend (I don't think we've ever followed a recipe together ... and when we did it didn't work.  I will never eat cream puffs again.)  Anyways, we decided to bake with my little siblings and thought it would be fun to make a braided yeast bread.  We didn't have enough time to let dough rise, so we needed something faster.  Why not cookie dough?  Why not try braiding cookie dough?  (Um, because it doesn't work - but we didn't think of that.  Or I didn't.)  And then, since we were braiding them into pretzel shapes, why not sprinkle coarse sugar on top?  But I didn't have any, so on went the kosher salt, just for looks.

Oh my goodness, it is SO much more than looks.

That salt made these snickerdoodles so.darn.good.  I can't explain the science of why or find the right words to describe the flavors. 

All I can say is try it.  You will like it.  I promise.  It's worth being the third wheel with salt and sugar's new bestie status.

Salted Snickerdoodles

Recipe Source: The Sweet {Tooth} Life

Yield: 2-1/2 dozen

1 cup shortening
1-1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2-2/3 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp. cream of tarter
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

Cinnamon sugar mixture 

A coarse salt (sea or kosher)

Preheat oven to 375. Lightly grease a cookie sheet.

Beat together the shortening and sugar.  Beat in eggs.  

Stir in flour, cream of tarter, soda and salt.  

Form into tablespoon sized balls.  Roll in cinnamon and sugar mixture.  Place on ungreased baking sheet and slightly flatten each cookie.  

Sprinkle with coarse salt.

Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes.  Remove from oven even if they look underbaked. Cool before eating.