GRAND RAPIDS – Melinda Amos pays homage to a dear friend every time she makes these snickerdoodle cookies.

The recipe came from Sally Copus, who used to work with Amos in the mailroom at the Sentinel-Tribune when it was located on Poe Road.

“Sally always loved them with her coffee,” Amos said. “She was like one of my work moms.”

Sally’s Snickerdoodles is a favorite recipe.

“And with her being a special person, it’s a cookie that I always make at Christmas time,” Amos said. “A lot of people like the snickerdoodle.”

While making the cookies, Amos uses Airbake cookie sheets, which require no grease.

She said this recipe will make around 18 cookies.

Snickerdoodles are her favorite, probably because of the memories, Amos said.

“Sally and I were really close. She was always fun to work with.”

She hasn’t made any changes to the original recipe but Amos said she did have to adapt her baking time. She said she is used to using a gas oven, but with a recent move, is now using electric, which required an adjustment in the baking time.

Amos said she used to bake cookies and sell them to her friends at the newspaper and the Wood County Educational Service Center, where she also used to work.

Now, 25 years later, “My teacher friend still buys cookies from me to this day,” she said.

Even Copus would buy the snickerdoodles, as well as peanut blossoms, from Amos.

Amos said she prefers baking over cooking.

She said she prefers baking because she always had a sweet tooth and when children Melissa and Michael were young, they loved the cookies and brownies.

Amos learned baking from her mom and through home economic classes at Otsego High School.

“The only thing I never picked up from my mom was making pies,” Amos said. “My mom always told me there’s a knack for making pie crusts, and I never … was able to pick up on that.”

She has many of her mom’s recipes and cookbooks.

Amos is a 1987 Otsego High School graduate and started working at the newspaper around 1994.

She worked for the educational service center as a paraprofessional for 12 years and at Sun Seed for five years.

Amos is currently employed at the Grand Rapids Care Center. She has been life enrichment director at the care center for four years.

“I love it here. My residents love me. They would probably hunt me down if I left,” she said, with a laugh.

She plans outings and daily activities such as trivia and book club.

At the care center, Amos has found more people to grace with her goodies. Amos will bake cakes (especially her mom’s chocolate), cookies and brownies for the residents; she does Buckeyes, fudge and peanut clusters for Christmas.

She said if she could go back in time, she would have been a teacher.

“It’s in my blood. My mom was a Sunday school teacher for 35 years at Weston Methodist Church,” Amos said.

She said she liked going into her the classroom taught by her mother, Kathryn Main.

“I never carried through with it because of the cost of college.”

Sally’s Snickerdoodles

1 cup shortening

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 3/4 cups flour

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1/2 teaspoon salt

Cream together first four ingredients the add the three dry ingredients. Mix together then chill.

Mix 2 tablespoons sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon in a bowl. Set aside.

Roll dough into balls and roll in sugar/cinnamon mix.

Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake until lightly brown, 8-10 minutes at 400 degrees with a gas stove or 375 degrees with an electric stove.