Light and Tasty Snickerdoodle Muffins

Snickerdoodle

Muffins!

A cookie in muffin form created especially for my sister.

My sister loves Snickerdoodles, and I'm always surprised by how many people don't even know about the cookie. I love them too and I thought they were pretty common, I guess they're not? So this past Christmas in the midst of preparing for all my baking my sister tells me that this year she would like some Snickerdoodle muffins instead of cookies. So I go, OK...never heard of the cookie in muffin form but I'll give it a shot. I began my research immediately. Pinterest, Taste of Home, Google. I looked everywhere and found a few different recipes for these muffins. Of course, one of the big things in the recipes was a lot of butter, cream, sour cream, stuff like that. Basically everything that would make a deliciously dense muffin. I know my sister and when stuff is really heavy she won't like it as much. So I started to tweak the recipes.

I looked at what they all had in common, the usual stuff: butter, flour, sugar, cinnamon, cream of tartar, etc. Where they differed was in the amounts and what type of liquid was used. Milk, sour cream, heavy cream, half-and-half...So I figured hey, why not cut the butter in half (according to 2 of the recipes I found) and use buttermilk instead of sour cream or heavy cream? From there I just took off running. Fiddled around with ingredients and which order to add them in, baking temperature and time. At the end of the day, I'd figured it out and was ready for my first test batch. They actually worked! I was really excited that I would be able to get my sister her Christmas muffins.

Curious to try these out? Well here's what you'll need!

2-1/4 cups all purpose flour (and another couple of tablespoons to add after)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1 cup buttermilk

Cinnamon Sugar

First things first, preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now grab a medium bowl and combine all the dry ingredients: the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cream of tartar, and nutmeg. Done? Good now set that aside for the time being.

In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar until it's like and fluffy.

Next, add in the 2 eggs, vanilla and almond extracts. Beat until everything is well blended.

Now its time to add everything together. Grab the buttermilk and the dry ingredients. Alternate adding them to the creamed mixture starting with the flour mix. Add some dry ingredients, mix it well. Add some buttermilk, mix it well. Continue this process until everything is mixed in. I like to mix in the last of the dry ingredients by hand, so I don't over mix. Because over mixing the batter is bad and messes up how the muffins rise.

Once everything is all together it's time to line your muffin tray with paper liners, if you're using them, which I highly recommend. I love them, as I've stated numerous times. Here's what your batter should look like: 

Looks nice and light, right? Now scoop the batter into the prepared muffins tins, filling them about two-thirds to three-fourths full. Feel free to add in another couple tablespoons of flour here just to ensure that they muffins will rise at least a bit more.

These muffins don't rise a ton, so it's completely fine to fill them up a little more.

I topped mine with some cinnamon-sugar and did my best to swirl it through the muffin, I need to perfect this still, but at least with the topping it worked out nicely.

Now toss them in the oven, well don't toss them, place them...for about 20 minutes. I like to switch my pan around at the 15 minute mark just because my oven has one tiny hot spot.

Muffins mid-baking, see how they rise but they don't get overly puffy? Yeah I don't know why exactly I'm still working it out. But it doesn't affect the taste, they're still light and fluffy, and of course delicious.

Once they're done let them cool in the pan for about 5-10 minutes then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Well there you have it! These are delicious warm so go ahead and eat some once they've cooled down from being straight out of the oven.

These got the taste-test approval from several of my friends and my sister so I hope you'll enjoy these too! Like all muffins, they're fairly easy to make and should be store in an airtight container for up to about 5 days. I individually wrapped these and sent them to Ohio. So they'll hold up in travel too if that's what you plan on doing with them.

Thanks for stopping by!

'Til Next Time!!