Over medium-low heat, melt the butter in a small saucepan. Once melted, increase the heat to medium and let the butter begin to foam. Keep cooking and stirring with a spatula, until the milk solids begin to brown and gives off a nutty smell (2-3 minutes).
1 cup unsalted butter
Pour into a medium bowl and let cool. Place in the fridge to solidify. In the fridge it took about 1 hour, so you can make this the day before. Don't want to use brown butter? Check out my notes below to use regular butter.
Snickerdoodles
If you made your brown butter the day before, take it out of the fridge so it can come to room temperature.
Preheat the oven to 350°Fahrenheit/170°Celsius and line two baking pans with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cream of tartar and salt together. Set aside.
1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 2 ½ cups all purpose flour, ½ teaspoon kosher salt
In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, cream the brown butter and both sugars together on medium speed for 2 minutes. When scraping the brown butter out of the bowl to place into the stand mixer, make sure you scrape out all the brown bits!
1 cup white sugar, ½ cup light brown sugar
After 2 minutes the mixture should be light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the egg, egg yolk and vanilla bean paste. Beat again on medium speed for 1 minute.
1 large egg, 1 large egg yolk, 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
Pour the dry ingredients in and beat on low speed until just combined.
Whisk the cinnamon and sugar together in a small bowl.
¼ cup white sugar, 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
Use a cookie scoop or spoon to scoop out 2 tablespoons of dough and roll into balls. You should have about 16 cookies. Roll each cookie dough ball into the cinnamon sugar mixture. You'll have a little bit of cinnamon sugar leftover.
Place the cookie dough balls on the prepared baking sheets, a few inches apart. I put about 8 cookie dough balls per tray. For any cookie dough that isn't being baked right away, place in the fridge.
Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes. The cookies will have slightly puffed up and cracked. If you want your cookies to be flatter, press them down gently with the bottom of a measuring cup when they come out of the oven.
Let them cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Video
Notes
My recipes have been developed and tested in metric grams. I highly recommend using a weighing scale and measuring out your ingredients the metric way. .
Brown Butter: don't want to brown your butter/don't have the time? Decrease the amount of butter from 1 cup to 13 tablespoons/227 to 186 grams and don't melt it, just go straight to creaming softened butter with the sugars.
Cream of Tartar: what makes snickerdoodles different to regular sugar cookies is the cream of tartar, so there isn't anything you can replace it with in this recipe.
Butter: I use European style butter in my recipes. This will make your finished bake much creamier and richer.Salt: If you don’t have kosher salt, halve the amount of salt called for in the recipe. 1 teaspoon kosher salt = ½ teaspoon fine salt.Vanilla Bean Paste: you can use an equal amount of vanilla extract if you don't have the paste. Storage: keep the baked cookies in a tupperware for up to 1 week at room temperature. Freeze unbaked cookie dough balls for up to 2 months. When ready to bake, take them out of the freezer and bake at the same temperature as above but for an extra minute or two.