Vanilla and Chocolate Pinwheels

Vanilla and chocolate pinwheels

I think these are the prettiest cookies. I took dozens of pictures. It is so nice to have food that photographs so well. Before I started doing this blog, I never thought about how different foods photograph. Some foods just are not photogenic and others are. These cookies are; I used chocolate and vanilla doughs but you can use different doughs to create your unique pinwheel (e.g., vanilla and a fruit flavor).
My husband's favorite pinwheel cookies are lemon and ginger. I didn't make those; I still may make them. It depends on how much I can get done before Christmas.
These doughs are easy to make and easy to work with. The only tricky part of these cookies are rolling them up into a log. I don't have mad dough rolling skills so I know that I am going to have two ugly cookies on each side. I am ok with that because I get to eat the ugly cookies. I also believe that broken cookies don't have any calories; I eat those too. These are two of the many reasons that I only make Christmas cookies once a year.

Vanilla Dough

3/4 Cup (170 g) of Butter
1/2 Cup (60g) of Powdered Sugar
2 Tsp of Vanilla
1 1/2 Cups (180g) of Flour
1/2 Tsp of Salt
Cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla together. Slowly add the flour and salt until well mixed.

Vanilla dough

Take half of the dough and flatten into a disc. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Chocolate Kahlua Dough

3/4 Cup (170g) of Butter
1/2 Cup (60g) of Powdered Sugar
1 Tbsp of Kahlua
1 1/4 Cups (150g) of Flour
1/4 Cup (40 g) of Cocoa 
1/2 Tsp of Salt
Cream the butter, sugar, and Kahlua together. Slowly add the flour, cocoa and salt until well mixed.

Chocolate dough

Take half of the dough and flatten into a disc. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Assembly

Place dough on a piece of wax paper and roll flat with a rolling pin. (In a perfect world you should have two rectangles one slightly smaller than the other). The dough should be firm for the next step (if it isn't chill the dough).

My not so perfect rectangles

Carefully place alternating colored dough on top and cover with a piece of wax paper.

Ready to be rolled

Carefully with a rolling pin, roll the dough together. Remove the top pieces of wax paper and roll the dough into a log. Wrap in wax paper and chill. Repeat with the last two pieces of dough.

Dough log

Baking

Preheat oven to 350F/176C/Gas Mark 4. With a sharp knife cut the log into 1/4 inch (1/2 cm) slices.

Dough log

Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 12-14 minutes or until the cookies feel firm. Allow the cookies to cool.

Chocolate dough on the outside

The bottom line: will these be added to the Christmas line up of cookies? Yes, I will probably end up making these and the lemon ginger pinwheels each year.

Vanilla dough on the outside