Swirled & Spiced Cinnamon Cookies
Sugar, spice, and everything nice–that’s what cinnamon cookies are made of! With their swirls of buttery, spiced brown sugar goodness, these cookies are gorgeous and oh so tempting. They’re a bit of a cross between a cinnamon roll and a snickerdoodle, and they’re so much fun!
What you’ll love about this recipe:
Buttery, not too sweet taste with a subtle tang from cream of tartar. Pillowy-soft, thick texture that melts in your mouth (If you’re looking for something cinnamon-sugared and thin and crispy, see my sand tarts instead!). Gorgeous, brightly flavored cinnamon sugar ripple — makes them the most unique-looking cookie on your Christmas cookie tray! Quick & easy to make with NO chilling required.
I was tempted to add a vanilla glaze on top of these cookies, but it made them a bit too sweet for my taste. It’s still good though, so if you love all things sweet, give it a try!
What You Need
I love these cookies because they are so flavorful without any complicated or fussy ingredients. Here’s what you need:
Butter. We’ll start this recipe with softened butter, and then we’ll need some very soft butter for the brown sugar cinnamon ripple. This butter should almost be melty–similar to the butter you need to make a filling for cinnamon rolls, but you don’t want it to be too warm or it will melt the sugar and be too difficult to work with. Egg + egg yolk. Adding an extra egg yolk to the dough makes these cookies super soft and tender. If you don’t want to throw away your egg white, use it to make candied pecans or candied walnuts! Sugar. We’ll use granulated sugar in the cookie dough base and brown sugar in the cinnamon swirl. I like to use light brown sugar, but you could use dark brown sugar if that’s all you have on hand. Cream of tartar. This adds a subtle tang, similar to the tang in snickerdoodles (and also found in my snickerdoodle cake. A funny sounding ingredient, you can read more about cream of tartar and its role in baking in my “What is Cream of Tartar?” post. Salt. This balances the sweetness and rounds out the buttery flavor in these cinnamon cookies. If you happen to use salted butter instead of unsalted, you will need to omit the salt in the recipe.
SUBSTITUTION TIP: If you don’t have any cream of tartar, you can use 2 ¼ teaspoons of baking powder instead. Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Cinnamon Cookies
SAM’S TIP: Your cinnamon cookies will be fragile while warm, so let them cool completely on the baking sheet before trying to remove them. I’d love to hear how you like these cookies compared to my snickerdoodle cookies! Enjoy! Let’s bake together! Subscribe to my newsletter to be notified of all the newest recipes, and find my free recipe tutorials on YouTube 💜
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