Food and a Thought :: Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

When I was younger, I never actually knew what a snickerdoodle was. I always assumed it was a cookie with peanuts, caramel, and chocolate... basically a chocolate chip cookie with bits of Snickers bars instead of the chocolate chips. When my mom ordered a few boxes of cookie dough for some fundraiser sometime around my freshman year of high school, I was confused when the snickerdoodles she made tasted like cinnamon. Upon further reading of the dough box, I realized what a snickerdoodle actually was. Heh.

On that note, here are some other misconceptions I had as a kid (and can remember):

• (Until age 4) I thought that the Westchester town of Mount Kisco was pronounced "Mom-Kisco"
• (Until age 5) I thought that the garbled noise sound you get from being in a big crowd of people (ie: at a mall/stadium) was everyone was making that noise just because they were in a crowd (sort of like cheering). I didn't realize it was just a compilation of many conversations that you couldn't pick out the details from. 
• (Until age 9) I thought that the grocery store "A & P" was pronounced "A.M.P." 
• (Until age ?) The image I always had of God in my head was the Keebler Elf. Sometimes I still make this weird association because I have for so long...

So misconceptions aside, today I decided to bake snickerdoodle cupcakes. Without many ingredients to bake with in my house, I figured I'd bake cupcakes and figure out something to flavor them with. It came down to lemon, orange, coconut, butterscotch, or cinnamon. I chose cinnamon because I rarely ever bake desserts with cinnamon. As for the cupcakes, even though cinnamon isn't my favoritey favoritest of spices, the cupcakes were quite good, moist, and the meringue-y frosting wasn't particularly delicious but fun for a change/definitely makes a statement. Recipe here!

( Note: I cut the cupcake recipe in half for 12 cupcakes and cut the frosting recipe in thirds). 

PS/Fun Fact :: The Joy of Cooking claims that snickerdoodles are probably German in origin, and that the name is a corruption of the German word Schneckennudeln ("snail noodles") It is also possible that the name originated from a New England tradition of whimsical cookie names (via Wikipedia)