Snickerdoodles

Honestly? Some of my first memories - the first events that I can recall - took place in the kitchen. My Mom taught me how to make Thanksgiving turkey stuffing when I was probably 8 or 9 years old. Each time since, as I take cheap white bread and celery in hand to chop into stuffing ingredients, I return to that old kitchen with its enameled metal table and linoleum floor. I am again tasked with something so important that it is almost too hard to bear for someone so young. What is Thanksgiving without dressing, after all? I could ruin the entire day!

Maybe it was that early trial by fire that has led me to continue making stuffing pretty much exactly as I did when I first learned how. Even considering the slightest change can cause a twitch of anxiety. Thoughts of cornbread or oysters in the stuffing can lead to a cold, shivery sweat.

Our son turned 34 this weekend and when I asked him what I could bake for him, he said cookies. Snickerdoodles, of all things. (What?! No chocolate? Was he really switched at birth?) It turns out that it was a great choice. They were delicious and fun to make after probably decades since the last time that I rolled the soft dough into balls between my hands and then shooshed them in cinnamon sugar.

Never let it be said that I am stuck in the past. I am pleased to say that, in my adult life, I've grown to love some foods that I had never heard of or imagined when I was growing up; but there are things like Mom's Thanksgiving stuffing and Snickerdoodles baked for a loved one, that simply cannot be improved upon. Go bake some. Feel good.

SNICKERDOODLES

1 cup softened butter

1 1/2 cups of sugar

2 large eggs

2 3/4 cups of flour

2 teaspoons of cream of tarter

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 tablesppons sugar

3 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar well and beat in the eggs, one at a time. Whisk together the dry ingredients and then mix that into the butter mixture. Mix it all together well.

Scoop up spoonfuls and roll them into balls roughly the size of a small apricot or a really colossal olive and roll them in the combined 3 tablesoons of sugar and the cinnamon.

Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 10 or 11 minutes. When they're done, the tops of the cookies will still be a bit soft to the touch, but will no longer look wet. Remove from the cookie sheet right away and cool on a rack.