Totoro Family Recipes: Pinwheel Cookies

The Joy of Cookies
by Sharon Tyler Herbst

My husband is a self-professed "boring" eater. The plainer the better.

Therefore, it is no surprise that his favorite holiday cookie is the Pinwheel: a simple sugar cookie / chocolate cookie dough rolled together to present a colorful, plain cookie.

Of course, such a simple cookie requires the finest ingredients. Creamy butter, pure vanilla, and dutch cocoa.



Ingredients (vanilla cookie):

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1.5 cups sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 2 cups flour

Ingredients (chocolate cookie):
Same as above except ....

• increase sugar to 2 cups
• decrease flour to 1.75 cups
• add 1/2 cup cocoa to the flour

Directions (do twice... once for vanilla cookies and once for chocolate):

1. Beat butter, sugar, salt and vanilla together until light and fluffy.
2. Add sour cream and flour mixture alternatively in 3 additions, blending well after each.
3. Divide each dough in half (you will now have a total of FOUR batches).
4. Place one batch on a piece of wax paper - top with a second piece of wax paper - and roll out into a 1/4 inch square
5. Do this for all four pieces of dough - then refrigerate approximately 30 minutes.
6. Take out two batches of dough at a time - one chocolate and one vanilla.
7. Take wax paper off tops of both.
8. Place one uncovered side on top of the other.
9. Remove the top piece of wax paper.
10. Slowly roll the two doughs together, creating a pinwheel design.
11. Place rolled dough in refrigerator while you assemble the remaining two batches.
12. When ready to bake.... take rolled dough out of refrigerator and cut into 1/4 inch slices.
13. Place on prepared cookie sheet.
14. Bake at 350 for approximately 10 minutes.

Dough may remain in the refrigerator up to two weeks.

These cookies freeze very well.

For a more elaborate decorative pinwheel... consider coloring the vanilla dough to make festive cookies (green and red for Christmas - orange and chocolate for Halloween - red and white for Valentine's Day ...)

This post is part of BethFishRead's Weekend Cooking Link-Up. For more delicious recipes, please visit her weekly blog feature.

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