Day 1 of the yum yums quest started out promising! I decided to turn one of my favorite cookies into a cupcake – the snickerdoodle. I just love the delicate balance between cinnamon and vanilla. Ooh, and the texture! A bit of a bite on the outside but nice and soft on the inside.

It sounded like a delicious way to bake something more creative while still keeping it relatively simple. Oh, how wrong I was there! Trying to look up recipes and combine common elements proved to be quite the difficult task. Every recipe I found had different ratios of flour to sugar, fat to eggs, etc. I know enough about baking to know that the ratios are rather important, so the inconsistencies I ran into were scary to say the least!

Eventually, I decided to mostly follow one recipe that sounded pretty good (here). It’s also an adaptation of one from Martha Stewart, so I figured it would be solid in terms of the basics.

I consciously made three changes:

• I added 1/4 tablespoon of cream of tartar (no snickerdoodle cookie is complete without it, yet no snickerdoodle cupcake recipe I found included it… While it mainly serves a chemical purpose, I like the hint of tartness it gives snickerdoodle cupcakes and wanted to try and recreate this aspect in my cupcakes.)
• I also added an extra egg (my research earlier today said this would result in a richer cupcake which sounded great)
• I swapped out the brown sugar buttercream for a simple powdered sugar glaze (I’m not a huge frosting fan in general, but also I figured since snickerdoodle cookies don’t have any accompaniment, frosting would take these cupcakes even further from the snickerdoodle homeland. I settled on a powdered sugar glaze after thinking about cinnamon rolls – the glaze adds a little something but still lets the baked good shine.)

The result? While I wouldn’t describe them as snickerdoodle cupcakes, they are pretty yummy! 🙂

The most pronounced flavor, instead of the vanilla or cinnamon characteristic of a snickerdoodle, is nutmeg. Imagine more of a spice cake but a distinctly nutmeg spice cake. Again, it’s not bad just different than I’d anticipated, haha!

The texture also wasn’t what I’d hoped for. These cupcakes didn’t rise at all! They are short and sweet. While they have quite a few holes in the tops, the insides are more solid (not really dense…just solid). They aren’t as bread-y as muffins, but they’re definitely closer to a “sweet bread” rather than a cupcake. Maybe that extra egg was just too much for them…or maybe I like my cupcakes lighter and drier? 😉

All in all, I conclude that I have yet to make snickerdoodle cupcakes…but I did make something yummy! It needs a name – Nutmeg Spice Cupcakes maybe?

I’m thinking the best way to recreate that iconic snickerdoodle flavor is to whip up a batch of snickerdoodles and go from there. I think I’m set for my next baking adventure! 🙂