These healthy snickerdoodle cookies are so soft they could be pillows.
Snickerdoodle cookie pillows.
And then we could have a snickerdoodle pillow fight, with sugary cookie dough flying in every direction. Mmm yes, a snickerdoodle pillow fight. How yummy would that be?!
Sweet and buttery pillow cookies…
I promise the snickerdoodles do not taste healthy. But don’t take my word for it; try them for yourself. My friends couldn’t get enough of these!
Skinny Snickerdoodles
- 3/4 cup ww pastry flour or white flour (See below for notes on a gluten-free option)
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt (just under level)
- 1/4 tsp cream of tarter (optional)
- 1/4 tsp plus 1/8 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 cup sugar or sucanat or evaporated cane juice (xylitol might work, but I haven’t tried)
- 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 and 1/2 tablespoons milk of choice
- 1/4 cup “butter” of choice, such as Earth Balance (I haven’t tried a lower-fat butter sub in this recipe, so I don’t know if that would work.)
Preheat oven to 330 F. Combine dry ingredients and mix very, very well. In a separate bowl, melt the butter of choice, then stir in vanilla and milk. Pour dry into wet and mix again. Form balls. For true snickerdoodles, roll each ball in a mix of cinnamon and sugar (either equal parts OR two parts sugar to one part cinnamon, depending on how cinnamon-y you want your cookies). If you want soft cookies, you’ll need to get the balls very cold. (So roll the balls, cover in the cinnamon-sugar, then fridge until cold.) Cook for 9-10 minutes. They’ll look way underdone when you take them out, but that’s ok.
I haven’t tried these with a gf mix, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. (Edit: if you read the comments, many commenters have successfully tried different gf versions.) In the meantime…
These are gluten-free: Snickerdoodle Blondies.
As for the vegan snickerdoodles: they will keep at least four days, in a lidded plastic container. (As a general rule, you should store soft cookies in plastic containers and crispy cookies in glass ones.)
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Katie, I’ve made a bunch of your recipes and always enjoyed them, but these cookies are really phenomenal!! I’ve made them twice now – once with splenda (for a diabetic friend), and today with brown sugar. I also subbed in veg oil for the EB, and upped the salt just slightly (to a rounded 1/4 tsp). I also mixed about 1 tsp of cinnamon directly into the dough.
Thanks so much for the recipe.. I really love your blog!! 🙂
the awkward moment when your not paying attention to what your doing and you try to add cinnamon into the batter and you accidentally add pumpkin pie spice… hahaha o well my moms boyfriend likes then im just not a huge fan because i was anticipating cinnamon but im going to make what i was trying to make tomorrow these ones are already soft and delicious! just a let down since i was trying to make something else haha
these were great! i will say, however, that they turned out MUCH fluffier when I creamed the sugar with the earth balance, rather than mixing it in with the dry ingredients. just FYI. thanks for the recipe!!
Just made these!!! They are very tasty!! I actually subbed ww pastry flour for oat flour, 1/2 sugar and 1/2 stevia, applesauce instead of butter. It all came out great!! My batch also only made 13 cookies! I think I’ll be making these for a christmas party soon!! And they are 35 calories each for mine.
Once again, I am SO thankful I found your website!!
I doubled the batch…. and still only got like 28 cookies! They are very small….. wonder what I did wrong lol they’re in the oven now, thanks!!
first vegan christmas for me!
Hmmm.. I don’t know! All I can think of is that sometimes measuring cups can actually hold different amounts. I hope they turn out well, though!
Instead of butter or oil I always substitute applesauce or pumpkin puree. I also add some nutmeg to the cinnamon for rolling the cookies.
Oh, and another way to keep cookies soft, put a slice of bread in the container. When it gets hard, replace ir. They stay soft/fresh for longer.
I only got 4 cookies out of one batch, and they didn’t taste like snicker doodles. They were soft and more like a muffin top than a cookie. I will be sticking to my usually recipe for snicker doodles.
Oh no! If you only got 4 cookies out of it, there was definitely something that went wrong :(. Can you tell me more about the specific ingredients you used? And are you sure one of the measurements wasn’t off? Hopefully I can help figure out what might’ve gone wrong!
I made little cookie sandwiches with these vegan snickerdoodles & a vegan hazelnut spread! Fabulous!
These cookies were good, and I’m glad all your recipes are vegan, but I’m confused as to how these cookies have less fat and sugar. There’s 1/4 cup of butter in the recipe which is 44 grams of fat (11g in 4 tablespoons) so if you make a small sized cookie, this makes about 8 cookies which is over 5g of fat per cookie. With only 3/4 c. fllour, there is no way you are getting much more than 8 cookies so I know I didn’t mess up my portions. If a regular recipe makes 3 times this amount of cookies, they’re not that much healthier in reality…am I missing something? I don’t mean to be rude, just trying to understand!
Hi Katie,
I never actually said that these cookies are low in fat, although making them into just 8 cookies would be pretty big cookies. They do have LESS butter/oil than all of the traditional snickerdoodle recipes I saw online and in my own family’s recipe box (and less sugar for sure!).
But I don’t subscribe to the notion that lower-fat = healthier. Our bodies NEED some fat in order to thrive, and I actually eat a pretty high-fat diet (but healthy fats as opposed to a lot of trans fats and saturated fats). These are also healthier because they’re whole-grain. Of course, I only said they were healthIER. They’re still cookies, of course ;).
but it is totally acceptable to eat these for breakfast though, right? 😉
Just made these, holy smokes so yummy! Don’t even taste diet one bit. I’m in love with your website, definitely going to make a whole bunch more of these recipes! Nice to know I can have a dessert once in a while without killing my diet. Thank you kate!! 🙂
These were amazing! Although I didn’t use sugar, I used Truvia and I didn’t use butter I used apple sauce.. still loved the taste. Cinnamon is my all time favorite so I will definitely be making these again. Even my boyfriend liked them!