I played water polo and swam for all four years of high school. Let’s be clear, I was NOT good. I was half the size of every other girl there and was often very tired during practice because I worked as a waitress on non-practice days. I never made it to any finals, and in true overachiever high schooler form, my days were extremely hectic. I’m still baffled as to how in the hell I operated on so little sleep; if I had that schedule now, I’d probably just cocoon myself in blankets and succumb to Bollywood movies in bed for the rest of my living eternity than face that kind of stress.
Through all the 6am morning practices and weekend tournaments, there was one thing that stayed constant—snickerdoodles. Every week, no matter how busy I was, I would take over the kitchen at home and bake a frenzy of snickerdoodles for my team. They took forever to make (try hand rolling 5 dozen cookies in cinnamon sugar at 1am on a Wednesday), but they were otherwise simple, filled with ingredients I could afford with my waitress wages and smothered in just enough sugar to give us all the energy boost we needed before or after a race.
Life lately has been feeling almost as busy as my swimming days. Between a full-time job (that I still love exactly a year later), staying involved with the culinary scene, and triathlon training, I’m finding myself stretched thin in wanting to live all my truths and live them well. It’s taken me back to my late night snickerdoodle baking and made me crave those cookies, which had become as much a source of comfort and calm as they were a dessert.
This time around, I wanted to make snickerdoodles in a way that gives me comfort when I need it most—in the mornings, as my mind is scrolling through to-do lists and emails. So I took the cinnamon sugar lurve from the cookies and baked them into a quickbread, with a simple oat-sesame streusel to make it good enough to eat for breakfast because #health. The result is a moist, slightly crunchy sesame snickerdoodle loaf to bring you back to the present when it seems that life is moving a little too fast. From swimming to snickerdoodles, I don’t hate it.
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