This recipe is quick and easy to mix up, requires no chill, and leaves you with soft, cakey, and perfectly spiced cookies that have all that snickerdoodle nostalgia with a lot less of the old-school fuss!
Prep and line: preheat your oven to 350°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.*1
Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla: cream together the butter, 1 ¼ cups sugar, and vanilla extract for 2-3 minutes until very light and fluffy on medium-high speed using a hand or stand mixer.
Beat in the eggs: add in the eggs, and beat for 30-60 seconds on medium-high until the batter is smooth, opaque, and slightly fluffy.
Mix in dries: stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl until blended. Add that dry mix to the batter, and mix on low speed just until fully combined, about 30-60 seconds. A smooth, soft dough should form. (P.S. be sure to scrape the bowl really well about half-way through mixing to find flour clumps!)
Scoop and coat: combine cinnamon and ½ cup sugar in a small, wide bowl until well-blended. Scoop dough into 1.5” round balls, using about 2 tablespoons of dough per cookie*2(an ice cream scoop works well for easy portioning). Roll dough balls between your hands to fully round (if not using an ice cream scoop), then roll in the cinnamon sugar until fully coated.*3
Tray and bake: place cookies on prepared trays, at least 2” apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes, just until their bottoms are golden brown and the tops feel completely dry, although they may still be soft and not quite fully set (a touch underbaked is actually okay for these cookies and keeps them from drying out).
Cool, share, and enjoy: allow cookies to cool as long as you can (so the warm middles and cool and reach their full cake potential). Then pass around these sugar and spice delights that will disappear from your kitchen in no time!
Notes
*1Doughy or Cakey? This recipe, as written, produces a puffed-up, cakier snickerdoodle cookie.If you’d like a flatter, doughier cookie, you can bake your cookies at 325°F instead of 350°F. The bake time will remain the same though.
*2Make ‘em big! If you’d like to make bigger cookies, you can use a scant ¼ cup of dough per cookie and you’ll just need to add 2-3 minutes to the bake time. The bigger cookies will also be a little doughier and a little less cake than the little ones, just FYI.
*3Roll in cinnamon sugar immediately! because the dough balls will dry out as they sit, I highly recommend coating your dough balls immediately after you scoop one or two. If you scoop all the dough, then go back to coat it, you may have a harder time getting the sugar to adhere due to the dried-out surface.
Storage: store these cookies at room temperature in an air-tight container for up to a week.
Fridge or freezer bake: while I prefer these cookies when baked fresh just after mixing, you can chill the scooped dough balls for up to 3 days or freeze them for up to a month. For best results, thaw the dough to room temperature before baking. If dough is thawed, simply follow the baking instructions in the recipe card. To bake directly from the freezer or fridge, follow recipe instructions for temperature and preparation, but know that your bake time will be a little longer (12-15 minutes), and your cookies will be a little doughier, and a little less cakey in the center than fresh mixed ones.
It’d mean so much to me if you could please give the recipe card a ⭐ rating on the site and leave a comment to help others find this sweet recipe! Xo, Jocelyn @ Mint+Mallow