Tragic (but tasty) Snickerdoodles

Snickerdoodle fail
First try in the back, second in front

I am a serious stickler when it comes to fats and oils. No, I don't substitute applesauce for all fats and I don't think that all butter has to come from cows who were hugged daily but I. Hate. Shortening. I grew up on the stuff and now that I know what's in it and how it's made, (lots of refining and crappy for you trans-fat) I avoid it like the plague. I use butter, lard and other oils instead of shortening as much as possible (which is not terribly often).

So here comes the problem. A co-worker asked if I'd make snickerdoodles for the monthly staff meeting. "This shouldn't be too hard," I thought. Wrong!

I went to the internet, found a recipe with a ton of reviews and read the reviews. The recipe used shortening. So I altered the recipe to sub butter for the shortening. It was glorious. The dough was creamy but stiff after I took it out of the fridge and rolled into little cookie balls nicely. I rolled the balls in cinnamon and sugar and flattened them down, per the most popular reviewer's method.

And disaster struck. These babies spread like warm jello. I suddenly didn't have snickerdoodle cookies, I had a very thin sheet of snickerdoodles all over my silpat. I had two trays to make so on the second tray I placed less cookies farther apart, thinking if they spread they wouldn't touch. I also didn't flatten them. I froze the dough so it would take longer to spread and I baked at 300 instead of 400, watching very very closely. Guess what? They spread again, just not running into each other this time. Sigh.

Sweetie liked the first batch of mess-ups better, saying they were more doughy. These are going to the staff meeting tomorrow night even though they're not lookers. They don't taste bad but they don't look like the pretty picture either. Any ideas for how to make them right without using shortening?