Snickerdoodle Days of Summer

Lately, I've picked up a new hobby of constantly thinking about crafting, baking, and recipes in general. I don't know if this is because I'll be moving into my apartment in a few months or if I'm finally realizing how cool these things are.

One of my current obsessions is cupcake and cookie recipes. I've started following some blogs, and there is just so much cool stuff! Last night, I finally broke down and baked up a storm. My sister and I had the house to ourselves, so we did what any teenagers would do...we took over the kitchen!

The first experiment of the night was a batch of snickerdoodle cupcakes topped with snickerdoodle cookies. I got the idea and recipes from that link, but we used a different icing recipe, which I'll post when we get around to it.

The cupcakes went together pretty uneventfully. My part of the process went off without a hitch.

Valerie ran into some trouble with spooning out our cupcakes, though. Let's just say that some of them weren't very pretty.

The pretty ones turned out well, though.

As soon as we had those on the cooling rack, we moved onto the cookies. Once again, they were easy enough to make.

 There was no cinnamon in the cookies, so I made sure to roll them in plenty of the cinnamon sugar. I like my snickerdoodles to have a good kick to them.

Cheesin' while scooping out the dough.

And here are our pretty cookies! Val made up the frosting while I started on the blueberry muffins. Before I get any further, let me warn you: these muffins are usually done after about 15 minutes, instead of 20. They always come out really light and they don't look like they're done. But as i learned the hard way, if they're starting to get golden on top, they're probably burning, too. 

I made a batch of regular ones, and then I made a second batch and added the zest of two lemons. I don't think there was enough lemon in it, though...next time, I'll add more. Maybe experiment with a larger amount of lemon juice?

 Here's the icing recipe that we used:

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

1 1/2 cups margarine, softened

4 cups sifted powdered sugar

2 Tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream butter at medium speed of an electric mixer; gradually add sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Add milk; beat until spreading consistency, then stir in vanilla. Yields about 3 cups.

What Val's doing here is piping icing onto the cupcake, topping it with a cookie, and then topping it off with another dollop of icing. (Actually, in this picture, she's messing around with the extra cookies.) Then, we sprinkled some of the cinnamon sugar left over from the cookies onto the iced cupcakes.

 And, here we are! These Snickerdoodles are ready to eat.

And the muffins don't look too bad, either!

All in all, I'd say it was a fun night. Probably a diet-blowing night, but still a fun one.