Cappuccino Swirl Snickerdoodles

I think I might be a little bit cursed. 

Every time me and my friend Bea go out shopping, it ends up raining. No joke. 

It normally starts off raining in the morning, so at least we have time to prepare ourselves with rain jackets and an umbrella. But last week was different. 

It was warm and sunny for the first time in quite a while, lulling us into a false sense of security - 'Oh, I won't need an umbrella, it's fine, I'm sure it'll be different this time.' Everything was going okay, we had managed to navigate our way to east London via the overground after realising that our original underground route was completely closed off. 

When we got out of the train station, the realisation started to creep up on me that the weather wasn't as nice as I previously thought. Grey sky and crazy strong wind. Yeah, not a good sign. We headed towards the small pop up mall, boxpark, to get something to eat, but we realised that we would probably then have to eat outside, not a wise choice.

With our slowly declining enthusiasm, and increasing hunger, we battled through the wind reaching a small coffee shop (which had some of the best coffee ever) just as the rain started to spatter down. We drank hot, foamy cappuccinos sprinkled with cinnamon, and shared a slice of orange cake in the woody warmth of the café, whilst we watched that stupid rain fall outside.

So after all, maybe it wasn't such a bad thing. If it wasn't for this rainy-curse I have, then we wouldn't have gone to the coffee shop, and I wouldn't have remembered how amazingly well cinnamon and coffee go together. Then I wouldn't have been inspired to make these cookies.

They're soft, thick, slightly crisp snickerdoodles, flecked with flavour: browned butter, vanilla bean , ground coffee and cinnamon. The cookie dough is divided in half, one half - left classic vanilla, the other half - flavoured with coffee. Then the flavours are reunited and rolled in cinnamon-sugar, to make one pretty amazing treat.

Cappuccino Swirl Snickerdoodles
makes 30-40 cookies

10 tbsp (5 oz / 140g) butter
3/4 cup + 2 tbsp (7 oz / 195g) sugar
2 tbsp corn syrup / golden syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
2 tbsp ricotta
3 tbsp cornstarch
1 3/4 cups (8 oz / 225g) flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp instant coffee
1 tbsp very hot water
3/4 tsp ground coffee

1/4 cup (2 oz / 55g) sugar
1-2 tbsp cinnamon

Melt the butter in a medium-large sauce pan over a medium heat. Keep cooking the butter, swirling the pan often, until the butter foams up, smells nutty and you can see beige solids in the bottom of the pan. Take it off the heat straight away and stir in the sugar.
Next, stir in the karo syrup and vanilla extract. Leave this mixture to cool whilst you preheat your oven to 340 degrees F (175 degrees F) and line a cookie tray with baking paper.

To the cooled butter mixture, add the egg and egg yolk. Beat them in well, then beat in the ricotta and cornstarch. Add the flour, baking powder, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt, then stir together until it just forms a dough. Remove half the dough to a medium bowl.

In a small bowl, dissolve the instant coffee in the very hot water. Add this and the ground coffee to the cookie dough in the bowl, and stir it in until the majority of the dough has turned a beige colour.

In a shallow bowl, combine the 1/4 cup (2 oz / 55g) of sugar and the cinnamon.

Take a slightly heaped teaspoon of the vanilla dough, and a slightly heaped teaspoon of the coffee dough, stick them together and roll into a ball. Roll this in the cinnamon-sugar mixture, then place on the lined cookie tray. Repeat, placing cookie dough balls about 1 1/2 " away from each other on the tray, until the tray is full. Flatten the cookie dough so it's about 1/2" thick, and bake for 7-9 minutes, when the cookies should be set on top, but still a a little soft in the centre. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack. Repeat this whole step until all the dough has been used up.