In 2001, I learned what a Snickerdoodle was. It was Spring Training and I had baked a plethora of cookies, so many types I can't recall the number, for the Angels' players. I'd baked them at home in LA and carefully flew with them to Phoenix, perfectly stacked in zipper bags, getting hungry glances from the airport personnel.
At the time, I was dating an Angels employee and I was hanging out outside the door to the Angels' clubhouse, probably reading a cookbook. I struck up a conversation with David Eckstein (he became my all-time favorite player as of that spring), who was about to make his Major League debut that April. When I told him I'd baked cookies and they were in the clubhouse for him and his teammates, he asked, "Are there Snickerdoodles?" I shook my head "no" with chagrin. But as soon as I was home in LA, I looked up a recipe for Snickerdoodles and baked a batch for the next time I knew I'd be able to pass them along to him. They've been one of my most requested cookies ever since.
I have used this Gale Gand recipe from the beginning and they veganize beautifully. I double the cinnamon sugar for rolling, substitute Earth Balance sticks (left on the counter to reach room temperature) for the butter, brown rice syrup for the corn syrup, and Ener-G egg replacer for the eggs. I find Ener-G to be a better egg substitute in cookies than flax eggs because the ground flax flecks show in a lighter cookie dough and will slightly change the flavor of the cookies. Ten minutes per cookie sheet was the magic number for me this evening and I make sure to follow the instruction to leave the cookies on the cookie sheets for several minutes before moving them to a wire cooling rack. They need to continue cooking outside the oven during that time.
This is the first time I've made them in quite a while and I'm sure my colleagues will happily eat the entire 44-cookie batch tomorrow. Starting a work week with cookies sounds like a good idea to me.
