Soft Snickerdoodle Cookies With Cream of Tartar

Soft snickerdoodles need cream of tartar and a short bake

A soft snickerdoodle is a cinnamon-sugar cookie with a lightly tangy center and crisp, crackled edges. This formula uses softened butter, cream of tartar, baking soda, and an extra egg yolk, then bakes 38-gram dough balls at 375 F (190 C) for 9 to 11 minutes. Pull them when the edges are set but the centers still look slightly soft. The batch makes 24 cookies.

This is a creamed-butter cookie, so the butter temperature and mixing order matter. Softened butter traps air as it is beaten with sugar; greasy or partly melted butter does not. If your kitchen is warm and the dough feels loose after mixing, a short chill gives it enough structure to scoop cleanly.

Ingredients for 24 cookies

For the dough:

• 225 g unsalted butter (1 cup), softened but not greasy
• 250 g granulated sugar (1 1/4 cups)
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 355 g all-purpose flour (about 3 cups, spooned and leveled)
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt

For the coating:

• 50 g granulated sugar (1/4 cup)
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Cream of tartar is not decorative here. It is an acid salt, and it supplies the acid that baking soda needs in this dough. King Arthur Baking's snickerdoodle formula uses the same pairing of 2 teaspoons cream of tartar with 1 teaspoon baking soda. The butter, flour, egg, temperature, and shaping in this recipe are Doughbies' own formula rather than a copy of that recipe.

Mix the dough without warming the butter

1. Heat the oven to 375 F (190 C). Line two light-colored baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Whisk the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. Break up every visible lump of leavener.
3. Beat the softened butter and 250 g sugar in a large bowl for 2 minutes at medium speed. Stop once to scrape the bowl. The mixture should look paler and slightly fluffy, not glossy or oily.
4. Beat in the whole egg, egg yolk, and vanilla until smooth, about 30 seconds. Scrape the bowl again.
5. Add the dry ingredients and mix on low only until the last flour streak disappears. Finish the final few turns with a spatula so the dough is not worked longer than necessary.
6. If the dough is too soft to hold a rounded scoop, cover and refrigerate it for 20 minutes. If it already holds its shape, start portioning immediately.

Do not taste the raw dough. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration explains that flour is a raw food, that processing grain into flour does not kill harmful bacteria, and that raw eggs can also carry harmful bacteria. Keep flour and raw dough away from ready-to-eat food, then wash hands, tools, and work surfaces with warm soapy water.

Coat and bake one sheet at a time

Stir the 50 g sugar and cinnamon together in a shallow bowl. Divide the dough into 24 portions of about 38 g each. Roll each portion into a ball, coat it fully in cinnamon sugar, and place 12 balls on each prepared sheet with about 2 inches between them.

Bake one sheet at a time on the center rack for 9 to 11 minutes. The edges should look set, the tops should be cracked, and the centers should still look a little puffy and soft. They should not be evenly brown from edge to center.

Leave the cookies on the hot pan for 5 minutes. That rest finishes setting the centers without extending the oven bake. Move them to a rack and let the pan cool before putting any later dough on it. Dough placed on a warm sheet begins spreading before the oven can set its edges, one of the causes covered in the guide to cookies that bake flat.

Read the butter before you start

Softened butter should take a clean fingertip dent while still holding its shape. If a finger sinks straight through or leaves an oily sheen, the butter is too warm. Chill it briefly before mixing. If the butter is hard enough that the mixer knocks it around the bowl, cut it into small pieces and wait a few minutes.

The aim is not a particular number of minutes on the counter. A thin stick in an August kitchen softens much faster than a cold block in winter. Texture is the dependable cue.

Do not microwave the butter until part of it melts and then stir it back together. The solid-fat structure has already changed, and the dough is more likely to spread. If that has happened, let the butter firm evenly in the refrigerator and use it for another purpose rather than trying to judge mixed soft and liquid patches in cookie dough.

Why the cookies crack on top

The coating dries first as the cookie spreads. The softer dough underneath continues expanding, splitting that dry cinnamon-sugar shell into irregular cracks. A rounded dough ball gives the expansion room to create the familiar surface, so there is no need to press these cookies flat before baking.

If the surface stays smooth and the cookie remains tall, first check that the butter was genuinely softened, not cold. Then check the leaveners. Cream of tartar and baking soda can absorb moisture during long storage, especially when their containers are left open near steam. Replace either ingredient if it has clumped badly or its age is unknown.

Keep the center soft without leaving it raw

The visual endpoint is a set edge and a soft-looking center, not wet batter. A pale center may still be fully baked after its 5-minute pan rest; a glossy, mobile patch in the middle needs more oven time. Add 1 minute and check again.

Cookie size controls the timing. A 38-gram ball has enough depth to retain a soft middle during this bake. If you make 20-gram cookies, begin checking well before 9 minutes. If you make much larger cookies, keep them evenly sized and expect a longer bake. Change size or time, not both on the first trial, so the result tells you something useful.

An oven thermometer is worth using if batches repeatedly finish much earlier or later than the range. A dark baking sheet can also brown the bottoms faster than a light aluminum sheet. In that case, parchment helps, but lowering the rack or adding another empty pan underneath can hide rather than solve an inaccurate oven temperature. Verify the temperature first.

Troubleshoot spread, puff, and dry edges

Change one variable at a time. Adding extra flour, lowering the oven, and extending the chill together may stop spread, but it will not tell you which change worked. For a different soft-cookie route built around melted butter and brown sugar, compare the one-bowl chewy chocolate chip cookies.

Store the cookies after they are fully cool

Let the cookies cool completely before closing the container; trapped steam softens the cinnamon shell. Store them airtight at room temperature for up to 3 days. Place parchment between layers if the coating transfers.

For longer storage, freeze fully cooled cookies in a rigid airtight container. Thaw them in the closed container at room temperature so condensation forms on the container rather than directly on the cookie surface. You can also freeze the portioned, uncoated dough balls; thaw them in the refrigerator, roll in fresh cinnamon sugar, and bake according to the same visual cues.

Explore more measured formulas in Classic Cookies and more cause-and-effect fixes in Baking Basics.

Sources

• King Arthur Baking: Snickerdoodle Cookies (accessed September 4, 2026). Supports the established cream-of-tartar and baking-soda pairing used for this cookie style; the Doughbies formula and method differ.
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Handling Flour Safely (accessed September 4, 2026). Supports the raw-flour and raw-egg safety directions and cleaning steps.

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