Description

These pinwheel cookies look fancy, but I promise with that my easy guide with a template will walk you through every step of the way. Chocolate and vanilla cookie doughs are rolled together to form a swirly pinwheel, then sliced and baked into the perfect festive cookies!

Ingredients

Scale

170g unsalted butter, at room temperature
180g granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract
1 large egg (50g not including the shell), at room temperature
310g all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt (use less if you are using regular salt and omit if you are using salted butter)
1/4 tsp baking powder
15g dutch process or regular cocoa, sifted

Instructions

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter, sugar, and vanilla. Cream on medium to high speed until light and fluffy, scraping down the bowl once or twice during the process. Alternatively this can be done in a bowl with a handheld electric mixer.
Add the egg and mix well to combine.
Add in the flour, salt, and baking powder, and mix until a dough forms.
Remove 360g of the dough and set aside in a small bowl. Note if you are doubling the dough recipe this number does not scale when using the scaling button, so remove 700g of the dough and add 30g cocoa to the remaining.
Add the cocoa to the remaining dough in the mixer, and mix to combine until the cocoa is incorporated.
Working with one colour of dough at a time, take the dough and place on a a piece of parchment paper. Top with another piece of parchment paper. Roll out to a thickness of 4mm (0.16"), using a piece of A4 printer paper as a guide (see notes below on sizing). You want the dough to be big enough that you can cut around the piece of paper in the next step - take pieces off any areas that stick out and place them in areas that need them, then keep rolling - they patch themselves to the dough.
Once the dough is the right size, transfer it to a baking sheet and repeat with the other piece of dough.
Transfer the dough, still on the baking sheet and between the parchment paper, to the freezer and freeze for 20 minutes - you want it to be fully solid.
Remove from the freezer and remove the top sheet of parchment paper from the first piece of dough. Use the piece of printer paper as your template and use a ruler to cut the dough to exactly the size of the piece of paper. Do the same with the other flavour of dough. If at any time they are getting warm, transfer them back to the freezer (make sure if you are stacking them there is a piece of parchment between them.
Once you have cut out the dough to the size of the piece of paper, freeze both pieces again for another 5 minutes.
Loosen each piece carefully from the bottom piece of parchment - leave the vanilla dough on the parchment paper.
Carefully place the chocolate dough on top of the vanilla dough, leaving about 1cm of vanilla dough for overlap along the long edge (see images in blog post). Gently press the dough together to make sure that there are no air bubbles.
Leave to stand for 5-10 minutes until the dough is soft enough to roll up - if it is too cold it will be hard to roll.
To roll up the pinwheel cookies, starting with the long edge, carefully fold the overlapping vanilla edge of the dough over the edge of the chocolate dough - pull the parchment paper up to help it adhere if you need. Continue to tightly roll the dough up into a roll. If the vanilla dough cracks, just use your fingers to patch it up. Once you have a log of dough, gently roll it back and forth a few times to make sure that it is nicely sealed.
Tightly wrap the log of dough in plastic wrap, and then chill for at least 2 hours or up to 5 days. I like to place mine inside a piece of PVC pipe, or you can use a paper towel roll cut in half to rest the dough in to help it not get a flat edge.
When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 330°f / 165°c. Line 1-2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Remove the log of dough from the fridge. Unwrap and place onto a cutting board. Using a sharp knife, slice off the end of the dough to reveal the spiral inside.
Slice the log of dough into cookies approximately 1 cm thick. Arrange on the sheet pan / sheet pans (I can fit a whole batch on one pan but you may not be able to depending on how thick you cut them and how big your pan is).
Transfer the cut cookies to the freezer and freeze for 10 minutes.
Bake the cookies for 15-16 minutes, until the edges and middles are set and the edges are starting to go a little golden brown.
Remove from the oven and leave the cookies to cool on the pan for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to a week.

Notes

To make checkerboard cookies:

This makes three logs of dough. Double the dough recipe - remove 700g of dough (this number does not double when you use the scaling button just FYI), and make half cocoa flavoured. Divide the dough again so that you have four portions - two vanilla and two cocoa. Cut yourself a template that is a 16x12cm rectangle from parchment paper. (I do not have the inches sorry but US rulers should have cm on them)

Roll each piece of dough out between two pieces of parchment paper until it is 1cm thick, and slightly larger than your template. Stack the doughs on a sheet pan and freeze, still between the parchment, for 20-30 minutes until totally solid. Remove from the freezer and trim down the doughs so there is about 1cm extending from the sides of the template (it is fine if this is not exact, you are just trimming them down to an approximate size). Stack up the dough, alternating vanilla and chocolate, and press down gently.

Using your template, measure and cut the dough block into a 12x16cm rectangle using a sharp knife (I like to score the cut first so I have a place to put my knife blade), then cut down the middle so that you have two blocks of dough measuring 6x16cm. Cut each block of dough into 1cm wide x16cm long planks, revealing the striped pattern. You should now have 12 planks of dough - you use 4 to make each log of dough.

Stack up the dough planks - arrange one on a piece of parchment paper then place a second on top, flipping it so that a chocolate stripe sits over a vanilla stripe. Place the third piece the opposite way, and flip again for the top piece. Repeat with the other pieces until you have 3 logs of dough.

Wrap the logs of dough tightly in plastic wrap and chill for at least 2 hours. Slice the logs of dough into cookies 1cm thick (if your checkerboard is a little wonky you can squish it back into shape), then bake as written in the pinwheel cookie recipe - I used two pans as it makes more cookies.

Note: I didn't try this but will next time - I found that it was quite hard to cut nice even planks of dough and I was off on an angle each time but it was always off the same angle, so once you cut the block of dough into two pieces, you could flip the second piece so that it has the vanilla side facing up intstead of chocolate, so if your cutting is a bit wonky, the planks of dough should even each other out when placed together.

To make Zigzag cookies:

Make the dough as directed, then roll each flavour out between two pieces of parchment paper to 6mm thick. Chill at least 2 hours. Cut the dough into strips as wide as your cutter - I work with a little bit at a time and keep the rest in the fridge. Using a crinkle cutter (I used one designed for making crinkle cut fries), cut strips of the dough, and arrange them together on a sheet pan. Press gently together and smooth down by covering each with a piece of parchment paper and smoothing with your fingers. I did lots of little squares of the pattern. Chill the dough for at least 30 minutes to firm up. Cut shapes from the patterned dough. Freeze and bake as directed in the pinwheel recipe. Press the dough offcuts together and roll to 6mm thickness, then chill and cut out cookies. Repeat the freezing and baking process to bake these off. You can also use patterned cutters for this - I used cat ones - I have this set and this set.

To make heart cookies:

I made a double batch of the dough then divided it into three - I did half (700g) plain, a quarter (350g) I added red food colouring to (I used the oil based one from colour mill) and then the other quarter I added 15g black cocoa to. I rolled out between parchment as above for the zigzag cookies, then froze the dough and used a heart shaped plunger cutter to cut out pieces, and filled the holes in with cut outs from the other doughs. I repeated with all three doughs, then chilled them and cut out circles using a scalloped cutter. Freeze and bake as directed in the pinwheel cookie recipe.

If you are scaling the recipe please note that you will have to manually scale values within the method - eg remove 700g of the vanilla cookie dough if you are making a double mix.

Printer paper is a slightly different size depending on what country you are from - a piece of letter paper / A4 printer paper will work great! (approx 8x11" / 20x28cm) - A4 is a slightly different size but will work fine.

Can this recipe be scaled? Yes - it is not too much more effort to make two logs of dough so if you wanted to, you could easily double it, especially because the cookies freeze so well. Do not try and work out how to change the size of the rectangle - just make a double batch of dough then divide into two pieces of chocolate and two vanilla and make two separate logs of dough.

How to chill round logs of dough so they don't get a flat side - I use a sneaky little trick here - I chill my dough in a PVC pipe! I just got a little length of it from the hardware store, and it works perfectly for keeping the log of dough in in the fridge so that it does not get a flat side from sitting on a shelf. This is a totally optional step - you could also use a paper towel roll cut in half.

Can Pinwheel Cookies be made ahead of time? Yes - this is a great recipe to make ahead of time. The rolls of dough can be made up to 5 days in advance, or you can freeze the sliced cookies - they bake from frozen already so there are no extra instructions for baking from frozen. To store in the freezer, slice the cookies, freeze until solid on a sheet pan, then transfer to an airtight container in the freezer for up to 3 months.

How do you store pinwheel cookies? Store pinwheel cookies in an airtight container. They are a soft and chewy cookie, and will keep well for about a week.