Recently I ran out of peppercorns. Saturn had me place a bulk order with my preferred spice merchant Burlap and Barrel while they were running a 10 year anniversary celebration and handing out a free cinnamon extract in every shipment. I’m not normally a big extract person, so I tried everything I could to remove the cinnamon extract from my cart, but it kept adding it back. Eventually I gave up and accepted that I would have to figure out what to do with a cinnamon extract as a not very cinnamon-forward personality. I figured at least it wouldn’t take up much cabinet space, or I could regift it.
Then as soon as I unboxed this extract I was struck. Instead of using the standard clear liquor as the base of the extract, they had used rye whiskey. Immediately I could see potential that I hadn’t imagined before.
A simple snickerdoodle seemed to be the most obvious place for the cinnamon extract to shine. The packaging noted sweet orange undertones, so I used Ceylon Cinnamon instead of Royal Cinnamon and swapped the traditional cream of tartar for lemon zest.
Ingredients
227 g salted Kerrygold butter (or your personal preference)
300 g golden or white sugar
1 lemon
1 egg
About 1 tablespoon cinnamon extract
(Optional) about 1 teaspoon ground Ceylon cinnamon
285 g all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
For topping:
¼ cup sugar
Bit of cinnamon
Pinch of fine grained salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Line a baking sheet with parchment.
Melt the butter. Brown it if you want. I didn’t because I wanted more of the citrus and whiskey flavors to be the focus.
While the butter is melting, weigh the sugar into a mixing bowl. Zest half the lemon into the sugar.
Pour the melted butter over the sugar and mix until all the sugar is hydrated. Let this cool for a while.
Add the egg and stir until well incorporated.
Add the cinnamon extract and the ground cinnamon (if you’re using it; you don’t have to). Stir until the texture is smooth and consistent.
Weigh the flour into the mixing bowl and measure in the baking soda. Gently fold the dry ingredients into the mixture until no streaks remain. If you’ve been using an electric mixer to this point, you should stop and do this part by hand. We want the final cookies to be pillowy soft, so we need to be gentle in this step and not overmix.
Scoop the cookies onto the parchment lined baking sheet. Space them apart generously as they do expand and spread quite a lot. I use a 1.5 tablespoon scoop scraped flat, and I can fit twelve cookies on a half sheet pan.
Sprinkle cinnamon sugar on the top of each dough ball if you like. Normally I would roll a cookie like this, but this dough is very soft. If you do want your cookies totally inundated in cinnamon sugar instead of having a light topping as shown in the picture, you can let your cookie dough set in the fridge for an hour before scooping so it’s firm enough to roll. I’m just more impatient than I am attached to the outcome.
Bake for 7-8 minutes per batch if they’re small like mine, or up to 12 minutes if you’re making bigger ones.
I scoot my cookies the moment they come out of the oven. If you like your cookies soft and chewy like I do, here’s a scooting tutorial. If you prefer a flat, crisp cookie, don’t scoot them and let them bake a little longer.
If you try scooting them and they wrinkle at the edges instead of reshaping, they’re setting too much for the scoot to work properly. Bake your next batch for one or two minutes less and try again.
Once cooled to room temperature, store the cookies in an airtight container. If it’s sealed properly, they will stay good for ten days, if they last that long.
