You probably had snickerdoodles as a kid. Maybe your grandmother or an aunt made them for you.  Snickerdoodles have always been a universal kids' favorite. Maybe it was the crackly cinnamon sugar coating. Maybe it was the chewy centers. Maybe it was the cinnamon and gold mottled surface. Whatever the reasons, these have been popular cookies for a very long time. (Our oldest cookbooks have snickerdoodle recipes in them.)

We've made these old-time snickerdoodles even better with the addition of cinnamon baking chips.  Every bite gives you a burst of sweet cinnamon flavor.  Our testers called these the best snickerdoodles ever.

A proper snickerdoodle has lots of cinnamon but good cinnamon is hard to find. (Look for quality cinnamon in a specialty spice shop or online.) A good cinnamon will be spicy-sweet and smooth with less bite. Inexpensive cinnamon has an astringent, almost chemical, taste to it. The best cinnamon comes from Indonesia or Sri Lanka. These snickerdoodles are made with a pure Korintje cassia cinnamon from Indonesia that is so smooth that you can dip the tip of your finger in it and eat it.

You'll have fun making these cookies with the kids. There is something about making little round balls with the dough and rolling those balls in the cinnamon and sugar mixture that kids delight in. These cookies are attractive to give as gifts.

Ingredients: Enriched pastry flour (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, and folic acid), cinnamon baking chips (Sugar, palm oil, cinnamon, non-fat dry milk, and soy lecithin (an emulsifier)), sugar, eggs (whole dry eggs with less than 2% sodium silicoaluminate added as an anti-caking agent), xanthan gum, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, salt, natural vanilla flavor (vanilla, maltodextrin, modified food starch, and silicon dioxide), and cream of tartar. This mix contains wheat and egg.  It may contain traces of peanuts, tree nuts, soy, or dairy products.