What happens if you leave cream of tartar out of a sugar cookie recipe?!
Answers:
If the only other leavening ingredient is baking soda, your cookies won't rise, as cream of tartar reacts with the soda to produce carbon dioxide.
(sigh) Cream of tartar has nothing to do with taste, or nutrition. It's used for leavening, in combination with baking soda, and stabilization of beaten egg whites, in meringues.
45 years of cooking and baking.
Just use baking powder instead of the baking soda and cream of tartar. Or if you don't have baking powder, you can use air bubbles for leavening by separating the egg whites, beating them lightly into a soft meringue, then carefully fold in the other ingredients to make a light and airy batter. Use a scoop to quickly drop the batter onto the cookie sheet (I use a silicone pan liner). The key is to move fast so that the air bubbles remain well mixed to act as leavening. The texture will still be a bit different than the original recipe, but hey, if you're to lazy to go to the store to get the proper ingredients, what do you care, anyways?
The exact impact on your recipe will depend on the ingredients in the recipe. Cream of tartar helps stabilize and give more volume to beaten egg whites. It is the acidic ingredient that activates some baking powder. It is also used to produce a creamier texture in sugary desserts because it inhibits the formation of crystals.
The baking soda won't activate & the dough won't rise.
They will be crunchy instead of chewy.
Nothing really. It will just be less nutricious
it will possibly taste a little bit off