Cinnamon Sings in These Sugary Snickerdoodles

She wore men’s shoes. She scolded other teachers’ students. She rarely smiled and she never accepted excuses.

All the girls at my high school said Sister Alexandrine was a mean old nun. I didn’t think so.

She was my piano teacher and OK, I’ll admit she was all business. But if you ever heard her play you’d know she could be angelic.

In her slender hands the simplest Bach dance or Mozart sonata would ring with a bell-like clarity while underneath brimmed a wealth of intellectual revelation.

I began to hang around her studio at all hours, like a stray cat. She began to feed me. Sometimes it was sandwiches, but more often it was wonderful cookies. She kept snickerdoodles in an old coffee can that had long ago lost its java scent and now breathed cinnamon.

That magic ingredient transforms an ordinary sugar crisp into a snappy snickerdoodle. Try one and you’ll be forever hooked. I still crave them, but these days, I buy them at Paradise Bakery in Santa Ana. Big, toothsome, sandy-textured cookies are baked with plenty of sugar and shortening, then spiked with a hint of fragrant cinnamon.

Snickerdoodles may seem uninviting to those who prefer chocolate chips. But sometimes simple, austere tones--in cookies, music and people--offer a world of flavor, once you see beyond the basics.

* Snickerdoodle cookie--150 calories/6 grams of fat. 93 cents at Paradise Bakery & Cafe, 2800 N. Main St., (MainPlace/Santa Ana mall), Santa Ana. (714) 836-4413.

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