Preheat the oven to 400*F.
Gather your ingredients:
1C shortening (1/2 crisco, 1/2 margarine)
1 1/2 C sugar
2 eggs
2 3/4 C flour (unbleached)
2 tsp cream of tarter
1 tsp of soda
1/4 tsp salt
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2 Tbls of sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
In a Mixing bowl, cream together the sugar, margarine (at room temperature) and crisco until smooth and creamy. Add in the eggs and mix in well.
In a separate bowl, combine your dry ingredients and whisk together to blend well. (flour, cream of tarter, baking soda, and salt.
Slowly combine the dry mixture into the creamed shortening and sugar mixture in small amounts at a time until they're all mixed in together.
In a 3rd, much smaller bowl (a cereal bowl will work well), mix your cinnamon and sugar. (You may want to make more than the 2 Tbls of sugar and 2 tsp of cinnamon amounts so you can have left overs to top your morning toast with.) Blend well.
Roll into balls the size of small walnuts (here I made them larger because I wanted to really made my brother happy, but the original recipe says to make them the smaller size), using your hands to make them round. Then roll them into the cinnamon/sugar mix and lay them on the ungreased cookie sheets about 2" apart from each other. While they are in the oven, they are going to spread a lot.
Now, open your Mom's kitchen drawerl that's stuffed with 1/2 the dishcloths and things you've knit for her kitchen use over time and get out your Mom's 'Felted Oven Mitts' that you've knit up from Bev Galeskas' "Felted Knits" book (see? a knitting connection after all! and yes, I still need to make myself a pair...) put the cookie sheets into the oven and bake for 8-10 mins for the smaller size, 10-12 mins for the larger size, until lightly brown but still soft. Cookies will puff up and then flatten out.
Let cookies cool for 10 mins on the sheet before transferring them to cooling racks. If you've made the smaller size, you should have 5 dozen cookies. About 2 dozen size for the larger size.
Now, if you have a brother like mine, you'll want to hide most of the cookies out of sight so your parents (who you really made these cookies for), will know where they are and have some left after your brother comes breezing through their kitchen - always dipping his hand into the cookie jar! And if you want to make your Dad happy, bring him a couple to have while he's still a 'guest' of his local hopstial so he can have something that tastes really good! And let him know what's waiting for his homecoming, if your brother doesn't get to them first. (after 12 weeks in the hosptial, he might think about that...)
And as a final touch, if you want to surprise your Mother (since you are using her kitchen, after all) you'll clean up and put away the dishes, and leave no tell tale signs that you were even in her kitchen: something you never quite managed to do when you were 10 years old and baking in her kitchen way back then. Trust me, you'll shock her (might be a good idea to have her sit down first)! (sorry Mom for all those years of messing up your kitchen when I was back in school).
