Snickerdoodles

This is Adam's most favorite cookie and until now we've only bought the break apart and bake kind. But that's all changed now! We found a recipe that got rave reviews. After we made them I was reading some of the comments and it several people said that true snickerdoodles must contain cream of tartar otherwise you just had a sugar cookie with a cinnamon coating. We would agree now having made this new found recipe. In Sunday's Austin (un)American Statesman there was a big article about a 15 year old cookie swap in Elgin. Oh how I wish I could pull this off as I've wanted to host one for a few years now. But alas... One of the featured recipes was a snickerdoodle recipe and low and behold it contained cream of tartar so I knew it must be the true thing! All we can say is yum yum yum. This is THE perfect snickerdoodle recipe.
The only thing we did differently is we used 1 cup of butter instead of ½ cup of butter and ½ cup of shortening. Gag.

Snickerdoodles by Gena Carter (from Elgin maybe?)
½ cup of butter, softened
½ cup of shortening
1½  cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2¾ cups all purpose flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
Topping: 2 tbsp granulated sugar
               2 tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 400°.
In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter, shortening, 1½ cups sugar, eggs, and vanilla with an electric mixer or stand mixer.
In another bowl, whisk together flour, cream of tartar, soda, and salt.
Slowly combine dry ingredients with the wet.
(Or you can do what I do and mix all the wet ingredients in the Kitchenaide mixer, then add tartar, then soda, then salt, then slowly add flour...all while leaving it running.)
Shape dough by rounded spoonfuls into balls. Mix the 2 tbsp sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Roll balls of dough in mixture.
Place on cookie sheets. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until set but not too hard. Remove immediately from baking sheets.