Best High-altitude Snickerdoodles (so far)

A surprisingly reliable recipe for smiles

These cookies once fetched $50/plate at a charity bake sale. That may speak better of the donor than the cookie, but trust me, this is a worthwhile cookie. A crunch on the outside, a chewy softness on the inside. (For those of you who bake at sea level, just know that those are not givens with snickerdoodles at high altitudes.)

I have to thank Owl, who has never complained at all the taste-testing involved in getting this recipe right.

These cookies freeze very well after being baked. It is always nice to have something in the freezer for a last-minute get-together. Thaw at room temperature for an hour. Then be prepared for compliments.

Youngest owl-cat said, "Smile, cookie!"

High-altitude Snickerdoodles
Note: You can chill the dough or bake right away. I haven't noticed a great difference in flavor or texture, but sometimes it is convenient to chill the dough. The dough is a bit wetter when baking right away, but it tastes the same after baking.

Dry stuff:
3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar

Other stuff:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening (helps with the softness)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons milk

Sugar-cinnamon stuff:
1-3 tablespoons cinnamon, depending on your taste buds (I really like 3 tablespoons.)
3 tablespoons sugar

0. If baking right away, preheat oven to 375 degrees.
1. Mix dry stuff and set aside. Mix cinnamon-sugar stuff and set aside.
2. Cream butter, shortening, and sugar.
3. Add eggs to butter, then the vanilla, then the milk.
4. Mix well.
5. Add the dry stuff slowly. Mix until it all comes together.
6. Optional: Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill.
7. Roll dough into balls (2 tablespoons is a good starting place. Adjust when you find your preferred size. I have even made big 1/4-cup dough balls. Big cookies make Owl feel special.)
8. Roll dough balls in sugar-cinnamon stuff.
9. Bake. In my oven, it is about 8 minutes for 1-tablespoon balls, about 10 minutes for 2-tablespoon balls. Bake until puffy and the dough still looks a little wet in the creases.  The edges will be firm and slightly golden, but they may not look quite done to you. (See picture below.)
10. Cool on sheets for 2-5 minutes. Remove to a wire rack.
11. Enjoy while warm. Share if you must.

Puffy cookies right out of the oven. They will deflate a bit.

Coffee Cake (High Altitude)

I grew up calling this breakfast cake, since it’s eaten for Sunday breakfast (or, if church is late enough, brunch). But then Cat didn’t want to make dessert for Sunday evening, since we’d already had cake for breakfast. I’ve taken to calling it a pan-muffin, since it bears the same relationship to a muffin as a cake does to a cupcake. (The name isn’t perfect, but I can’t think of anything better. Ideas?) In any case, it makes for a perfect Sunday breakfast with an omelette and a bowl of fresh fruit.

It really is just a giant muffin. You make your favorite muffin batter and pour it into one pan instead of little cups. And, just as muffins can be anything from sawdust-and-glue bricks to poundcake monsters, so too can a pan-muffin be a “health food” or a millstone of trans fat and refined carbohydrates. Or it can be good.

There are many different ways to make this. You can fill it with fruit—blueberries, mandarin oranges, apple slices; you can mix in applesauce or overripe bananas; you can top it with pecans and butterscotch. (I like to mix an apple chopped into small pieces. If you do this, it may take a little longer to cook.) You can do any of the muffin variations in your cookbook. But the quintessential pan-muffin is a streusel topping over a not-too-sweet cake.

The streusel is tricky. If the clumps are too thick, they’ll sink into the cake (which makes a nice marbled effect, but leaves the top naked). The trick is to make a fine layer; the finely chopped nuts help with that. (If they’re chopped finely, they don’t overwhelm the texture.)

This recipe was developed at 4,000 feet. I know it works here. Let me know if it works where you live.

Pan-muffin

The perfect Sunday breakfast.

Dry stuff:
2 cups flour (I use 1 cup pastry wheat flour and 1 cup all-purpose)
¼ cups sugar
½ t salt
½ t soda

Wet stuff:
¼ cup oil (or, better, melted butter)
2 eggs
1¼ cups buttermilk

Streusel:
2 T melted butter
½ cup brown sugar
¼ cup oats or blended nuts

0. Preheat the oven to 375.
1. Mix the dry stuff together.
2. Mix the wet stuff together.
3. Stir the wet stuff into the dry stuff.
4. Pour the batter into a greased 8x8 pan.
5. Mix the streusel together.
6. Sprinkle the streusel on top.
7. Bake for 30 minutes.

Buttermilk pancakes

Pancakes are simple. You need a cup of flour, a cup of milk, an egg, and some oil, leavening, and salt. The batter is just thick enough to hold the bubbles as you cook it over a hot griddle, but just thin enough that it cooks quickly.

You can do better than the simple recipe if you give the pancakes just enough gluten to stay together but not so much that it gets tough and chewy. Most cookbooks will tell you to mix the dry ingredients separately from the wet, and to leave the batter lightly lumpy. This is because stirring works on the gluten, and too much stirring toughens the pancakes up. (You want that in bread, so you knead it. What’s good for the bread is bad for the pancake.) But if you leave the gluten out entirely, you’ll have pancakes that don’t want to stay together when you flip them.

So I make my pancakes with some oats (which have a soft and subtle flavor) and low-gluten “soft” wheat. I also use a thick milk—cultured buttermilk—so I can cut back on the flour. (Yogurt can also work, but I haven’t had as much success with it.) This works out to be an optimal balance for me. If I don’t have low-gluten flour, I use a little cornstarch in place of some of the flour (the long starch molecules can help bind the pancakes together). Because buttermilk is acidic, I use baking soda to leaven it. Baking powder doesn’t do much with an acidic batter.

I cook them on a cast iron, which gives the outside an almost pastry-like crust. Cat and I have a ceramic cooktop, and we feel we’re tempting fate every time we put the cast iron on it. I don’t turn it up quite as high as I’d like, but it still beats—by far—any electric griddle I’ve used. (It also mottles the pancake’s face more than a non-stick surface. Compare the picture above with almost every pancake glamor shot.) I also use a glass bowl to stir it. That way I can see if there are any hidden clumps of flour, and stir the batter very little and very gently.

Some people separate the eggs. I haven’t seen the benefit. If you do, go ahead. Before I could afford buttermilk, I mixed acid (lemon juice or vinegar) into the milk to make substitute buttermilk. I really don’t think that’s worth it, nor do I see the benefit of adding vanilla. Sourdough pancakes are too chewy for me, and yeast pancakes are too, well, yeasty. Both leavening techniques are better for waffles. When my pancakes come out just right, I wonder why I bother eating anything else. Grandpa used to mix licorice flavor into the batter. I recommend that only to the nostalgic.

This, then, is the recipe I follow, the one that works for me. Experiment, and let me know what works for you.

Buttermilk Pancakes
Why eat anything else?
Prep time: about 15 minutes. You get faster if you make them every day.
Dry stuff:
½ cup rolled oats
1¼ cup soft wheat flour
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt

I mix this up with an immersion blender, which partially grinds the oats. When I don’t have soft wheat I use hard wheat, and use corn starch for the last ¼ cup flour. You could try other grains in place of the oats. I’m not very exact on the salt (I use the ½ tsp measure to save on dishes, filling it about half full), and I may well use less.

Wet stuff:
2 cups cultured buttermilk
2 eggs
1 glug oil (probably somewhere between ⅛ and ¼ cup)—or, better, melted butter

Mix this up.

Pour the wet stuff into the dry stuff. Fold until there are no more pockets of flour.

Put it on a hot griddle, medium to medium-high heat. I use the ½ cup measure, since that’s what I’ve dirtied. It makes pancakes bigger than most people are used to.
Eat them hot, just as they come off. Do not wait until they're all done to start eating. I love them with salted butter and grade B maple syrup, or with full-fat plain yogurt and fresh berries or peaches. The owlcats love them with applesauce.