Sort of Snickerdoodle

This is a great emergency cookie if you have people coming over to celebrate, say, Christmas and you suddenly realize that although you have shopped and prepped and cooked almost everything imaginable, you forgot to buy something to accompany the afternoon cup of tea. That happened to me yesterday and as I turned to Nigella, who never fails me when it comes to fast, easy, stress-free recipes - the book fell open on the page with Snickerdoodles.

It turned out I did not have regular flour, only selfraising flour, so that´s what I used. I also added some extra spices to her recipe to make the cookies a little bit more Christmassy. They turned out great - at least, I really loved them, but Dennis pronounced them a little dull and too dry. It´s true that they don´t seem very rich or buttery, but I love their sandy, dense crumb that dissolves in your mouth, their subtle spicyness and the fact that they´re perfect for dunking into a cup of hot chocolate or aniseed milk. Or tea. They´re also really easy to put together, and they smell terrific. What more can you want from an emergency cookie?



Snickerdoodles, my way
250 grams selfraising flour
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
pinch of ground cloves
pinch of ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
125 grams butter at room temp
100 grams sugar
1 large egg
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 180 C.
Line 2 baking sheets with baking parchment.

Mix together flour, spices (except the cinnamon) and salt and set aside.
Cream the butter with the 100 grams of sugar until fluffy. Add the egg and beat well. Mix with the dry ingredients until you have s smooth batter.
In a shallow bowl, mix the 2 tablespoons of sugar with the cinnamon. Roll the dough into walnut size balls, drop these into the cinnamon-sugar and coat them with it. I found it worked well to drop in 3 balls at the same time and shaking the bowl around till all dough-balls were evenly coated.
Place the dough balls on the baking sheets, leaving a little room for spreading. Bake for about 12 minutes, they will be risen and golden and some may have cracked which looks kind of adorable. (Words like that just come to mind when you think of ´snickerdoodles´).

If you have cinnamon sugar left over, you can sprinkle some on the cookies when they are still warm from the oven.

Leave to cool for a bit, then transfer to a cooling rack.