A snickerdoodle is a type of sugar cookie

Sugar cookie

A sugar cookie is a cookie made from sugar, flour, butter, eggs, vanilla, and either baking powder or baking soda. Sugar cookies may be formed by hand or rolled and cut into shapes. They are commonly decorated with frosting, sprinkles, or a combination of both. In North America, sugar cookies are ...

 made with butter or oil, sugar, and flour rolled in cinnamon

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several trees from the genus Cinnamomum that is used in both sweet and savoury foods...

 sugar. Eggs may also sometimes be used as an ingredient. Snickerdoodles are characterized by a cracked surface and can be crisp or soft depending on preference. In modern recipes, the leavening agent

Leavening agent

A leavening agent is any one of a number of substances used in doughs and batters that cause a foaming action which lightens and softens the finished product...

 is frequently baking powder

Baking powder

Baking powder is a dry chemical leavening agent used to increase the volume and lighten the texture of baked goods such as muffins, cakes, scones and American-style biscuits. Baking powder works by releasing carbon dioxide gas into a batter or dough through an acid-base reaction, causing bubbles in...

 in contrast with traditional techniques utilizing baking soda and cream of tartar.

Snickerdoodles are often referred to as "sugar cookies." However, traditional sugar cookies are often rolled in white sugar whereas snickerdoodles are rolled in a mixture of white sugar and cinnamon.

Etymology

The Joy of Cooking

The Joy of Cooking

Joy of Cooking, often known as "The Joy of Cooking" is one of the United States' most-published cookbooks, and has been in print continuously since 1936 and with more than 18 million copies sold. It was privately published in 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer, a homemaker in St. Louis, Missouri, who was...

claims that snickerdoodles are probably German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 in origin, and that the name is a corruption of the German word Schneckennudeln (lit. "snail noodles"), a kind of pastry. A different author suggests that the word "snicker" comes from the Dutch word snekrad, or the German word Schnecke, which both describe a snail

Snail

Snail is a common name applied to most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have coiled shells in the adult stage. When the word is used in its most general sense, it includes sea snails, land snails and freshwater snails. The word snail without any qualifier is however more often...

shape. Yet another hypothesis suggests that the name has no particular meaning or purpose and is simply a whimsically named cookie that originated from a New England tradition of fanciful cookie names.