Is there anything more comforting, nostalgic, warm and wintery than a snickerdoodle? I tend to heavily favor recipes involving chocolate 😆 so it says a lot that I was craving snickerdoodles a while back, and I started hunting down a good recipe on which to base my creation. I always adapt like crazy (reducing sugar to as near-to-nothing as I can, and playing with flour—I do gluten-free and often experiment with grain-free). I found a base recipe and got to work. After only a batch or two, I had nailed it—in my opinion, but also heartily seconded by friends and family. These are a hit! I can’t get enough of them. (I may have to freeze a pile for summer when it gets too hot to bake! As amazing as they are with a hot winter drink, I think they’ll vibe well with a lemonade, too.🤔)
Would you believe these only have .5 gram of sugar each? To be fair, I make them bite-sized (and eat more of them throughout the day, haha), using a size #100 (2 tsp) cookie scoop, but you can make them large, medium or small. Bake a little longer and they’re crispy; a little shorter and they’re chewier, soft and pillowy inside. Cinnamony, fragrant, and heaven with a good cup of tea, cacao, your coffee, or any favorite beverage.
As always with my recipes, if you want it sweeter you can add more sugar, of just about any kind (see notes). (You’ll need more moisture—oil—when you add more dry ingredients including sugars.) And if you don’t care to be vegan you can use real butter, and/or a real egg instead of the flax egg, And if you don’t care to go organic, you can buy cheaper flours (and enjoy a side of glyphosate and other yummy chems!)
Some snickerdoodle recipes call for vanilla and some don’t; I love vanilla. The cream of tartar (as opposed to just baking soda) is apparently actually a signature ingredient in snickerdoodles, giving them a slightly tart taste—I use cream of tartar to create a home-made cornstarch-free baking powder anyway.
My cookies are slightly sweet, a bit tangy and a bit salty. I think they’re perfect! 😊
Enjoy and let me know what you think!
Sublime Snickerdoodles
0.125 cup (2 T) cassava flour (I like Otto’s)
0.125 cup (2 T) amaranth flour (I like Pure Living sprouted)
0.33 cup tigernut flour (I use Gemini or Anthony’s)
0.33 cup unblanched almond flour (I use Now Organic)
0.5 cup gluten-free all-purpose 1:1 baking flour (I use Arrowhead Mills)
3 T arrowroot starch (I use Namaste)
2 T tapioca flour (I use Arrowhead Mills)
1 T organic powdered sugar (I use Woodstock Farms)
2 T date sugar or coconut sugar (I use Date Lady or Big Tree Farms)
1 T ground flax meal (mix with 2.5 T water to make a flax egg)
.5 tsp. baking soda
.5 tsp. cream of tartar (I use Frontier or Spicely Organics)
.5 tsp Himalayan pink salt
.5 tsp cinnamon (I use Simply Organic Vietnamese cinnamon)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2.75 ounces (ish) butter, vegan or dairy (I use Miyoko’s Oat Milk butter)
CINNAMON-SUGAR TOPPING: I’m not very scientific about this—i mix equal parts Vietnamese cinnamon with either date sugar or coconut sugar in a bowl. You’ll figure out how much you need based on the size of your cookies and how many. I started with a couple tablespoons of each. Leftover cinnamon sugar can be good in your cacao (just a 1/4 tsp. does it)! 😀
INSTRUCTIONS: Sift the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and whisk. Mix up the flax egg and set aside (it takes a few minutes to “jell”). In a smaller bowl, melt the butter (I prefer stovestop, but microwave is okay). Mixed melted butter, vanilla and flax egg. Fold wet ingredients into dry and mix by hand until you have a firm, moist, slightly oily dough. Refrigerate for a minimum of half an hour, and up to one day.
To make the cookies, scoop your preferred size into balls onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Press the cookies flat and dip each in the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Bake on bottom oven rack at 350˚ for approximately 10-12 minutes—more if you like a crispy “well-done’ cookie (I do, so I go 15 minutes).
NOTES: You can switch up these flours any way you like. The 1:1 baking flour is probably a good idea for that “white” cookie feel. I like the Arrowhead Mills. (I don’t use Bob’s or King Arthur’s gluten-free 1:1 blend because it’s not organic.) But you could probably do all tigernut, cassava, and almond and call it grain-free; I’ll probably give that a try. Tigernut is actually a tuber and naturally a bit sweet. You might get a denser cookie, but I wouldn’t mind that. Oat flour, rice flour, or even millet flour can work well to replace the all-purpose part; ostensibly, oat flour by itself could replace all the flours (you’ll need to experiment). You could increase the tapioca and/or arrowroot. You could replace the amaranth with just about anything. Coconut flour might work in place of the tigernut, but I’m not sure how it would affect the flavor. If you’re not interested in being gluten-free, just plain all-purpose flour will work, but I still recommend going organic unless you like your grains soaked in herbicide.😬 I actually do think this flour mix provides a unique texture and flavor profile.
I specifically worked with this recipe to see how little sugar and butter I could get away with, and this is what I came up with. Feel free to play with adding more of either, if you feel you need. Other vegan butters (such as Earth Balance or Melt) could be used, though I prefer Miyoko’s; regular butter will also work, obviously. I like coconut sugar, date sugar, or maple sugar for baking, and the powdered sugar gives the cookie a little more fluff I believe, though there’s so little of it, it probably doesn’t matter much. Simpla® (plain allulose) or monk fruit might also work. Madhava makes a nice allulose product.
This is a small recipe, yielding about 40 small cookies (and fewer if you make larger cookies—with a standard #20 scoop, you might just get 15-20 cookies). I doubled this recipe last time and got 80 bite-sized cookies. More to share!
*I use all organically produced ingredients.
