Historical Food Fortnightly #18

Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #18: 

"Descriptive Foods"

The Challenge: Descriptive Foods

The Recipe: Snippy Doodle Cake

SNIPPY DOODLE CAKE 
One cup granulated sugar, one cup flour, one half cup milk, two eggs beaten light, one tablespoonful butter, one tablespoonful cinnamon, one and one half teaspoonfuls baking powder. Cream butter and sugar add eggs beaten all together and light then the flour and milk stirring briskly. Mix cinnamon and baking powder together with the flour. Bake in a sheet and sprinkle granulated sugar on top when nearly done 
Elizabeth Lohman Gibraltar Island Ohio 

The Book of Priceless Recipes, George F. Lasher, printer, 1907  p. 125

I think this is a misprint or a corruption of Snickerdoodle. I found the recipe in the same cookbook as the Moravian Sugar Cake and it also contains a recipe for German Sand Tarts (Christmas cookies) which my Pennsylvania grandmother always made for Christmastime. I infer from all those German recipes and the fact that the book was published in Philadelphia, that Snickerdoodle might be a Pennsylvania Dutch cookie. The Food Timeline has various theories ranging from ancient European to Dutch to colonial New England and my personal theory, German/Pennsylvania Dutch. According to Wikipedia: The Joy of Cooking claims that snickerdoodles are probably German in origin, and that the name is a corruption of the German word Schneckennudel ("snail noodles"), a kind of pastry.^[1] It is also possible that the name is simply a nonsense word with no particular meaning, originating from a New England tradition of whimsical cookie names.^[2][3] "Snicker" may be a word of German origin and derived from the word "schnecken", i.e. sticky buns."

---Craig Claiborne's The New York Times Food Encyclopedia, Craig Claiborne [Times Books:New York] 1985 (p. 412) 

Snickerdoodle cookies first appeared in American cookbooks in the early 20th century. The modern type of Snickerdoodle does not contain nuts or fruit and this recipe apparently dates to 1958. Where Snippy came from, I don't know but it could be a typo. I just liked the name. 

How Did You Make It:

I followed the recipe. It didn't make enough to cover a baking sheet so I whipped up a double batch and baked it in muffin/cupcake tins. That made 2 1/2 dozen large cupcake/muffins.

Time to Complete: The key it to let the butter warm up so it creams with the sugar. That took awhile the first time as the house was cold. The second time I made sure to warm the butter first. The total time would probably be about 40 minutes or so.

Total Cost:

I don't know. We had all the ingredients on hand. There are very few ingredients. I imagine the cinnamon would be expensive if one used real cinnamon. I used grocery store brand.

How Successful Was It?:

100%. It felt like cheating this was so easy and soooo delicious! My dad and I almost ate the whole pan all at once. (Picture us going yuuummm soooo goood... break off another piece and repeat)

How Accurate Is It?: 

100% except I used store brand cheap cinnamon and not real Ceylon cinnamon.