Baker's confession: for the longest time, I've had a weird fear of using nondairy butter in baking. Not only is vegan butter expensive and hard to find here in Korea, it also just seemed too complicated to use. The thought of having to cream the butter with sugar with a beater seemed like an annoying step, not to mention extra wash-up at the end, so I always avoided recipes that called for butter and just went with those with canola oil. However, ever since I used it to make the rocky road bars and the cupcake frosting for the bake sale, I've slowly gotten over my irrational prejudice against this ingredient, and it has opened me up to a whole world of more vegan recipes and potential baking experiments.
One of the cookies that I've been trying to make using oil has been regular snickerdoodles. However, no matter what I did or tweaks I made, I couldn't seem to get it 'perfect.' The oil-based snickerdoodles were always either too crunchy, or too dense, or just lacking flavor. So I finally just gave up and decided to try it with non-dairy butter. And my goodness, in this case, butter is the only way to go. I guess there are times when oil just isn't gonna cut it. Anyway, after a few trial batches, I think I've finally got snickerdoodles to come out the way I like.
For the base recipe, I used this famous one from Vegan Yum Yum, but made a few changes to the measurements. I also replaced the Ener-G egg replacer with plain ol' soymilk. I've also been using a food scale for most of my baking now, since this results in more consistent results, so I apologize to those who don't have a food scale...
{ Vegan Snickerdoodles }
adapted from Vegan Yum Yum
makes 10-12 cookies
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup nondairy butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 Tbs soymilk
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 tsp baking soda
cinnamon sugar for rolling (about 3Tbs sugar and 1Tbs cinnamon)
1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Cream sugar and butter with a mixer and then add the vanilla extract and soymilk. Mix well.
3. Sift together the dry ingredients and then mix with everything else until everything is incorporated.
4. Divide and shape the dough into even, round balls. Then roll one side of them into the cinnamon sugar. Place on the cookie sheet and slightly flatten with your fingers or a fork. Leave about 2 inches between cookies, as they will spread a bit.
5. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove and let cool on rack before serving.
As all snickerdoodles should be, these have a nice crunchy outer layer from the sugar coating, yet they're still soft to the bite and a bit bendy. The buttery flavor is wonderful paired with the vanilla and cinnamon. I like to describe them as homely, modest, unpretentious. They're not intense in flavor, like their spicy Mexican hot chocolate counterparts, but these are still delicious in their own right. Cookie-joy!