Baking cookies from scratch is a matter of course in my family. I consider convenience the ability to walk into my kitchen and start combining eggs, flour, butter, sugar and what else the pantry provides. Today, the pantry provided cream of tartar... via No Common Scents, an herb and spice store in easy walking distance... and a welcome remembrance from my youth.

I’m from a large family of three sisters and two brothers. We each came to cooking in our own way and had a cookie that became—if not our favorite—then our own specialty. Our oldest sister commanded the chocolate chip cookie, as is her due, while my older brother laid claim to peanut butter. These were the family favorites and so fell to the first born. I was next in line and chose snickerdoodles: a wonderful cinnamon-dusted cookie that my grandmother loved. Memories attending at her hip in a warm, fragrant kitchen are dear to me. After chilling the dough, we’d work the sweet tart mixture with our hands—releasing its perfume of cream of tartare—and bounce walnut sized globs in a bowl of cinnamon and sugar.

Grandma made her dough using Crisco shortening, a once trusted standard in 1970s comfort food. Today, you will not find Crisco in my pantry. Instead I use goat milk butter and risk overcooking. The other substitute I will make today is almond flour from Starflower Natural Foods. Today I replace a third of the wheat flour with almond.

The end result is quite good. These cookies are not the white crumb, mounded Crisco based cookies of my youth, but their goodness still brings Grandma close.