Checkerboard Cookies
8th Day of Christmas.
I only make cookies one time a year, around Christmas. Well, cookies like chocolate chip cookies, will be made all year round.
I really like vanilla cookies, and my husband loves everything chocolate. So these checkerboard cookies is the perfect compromise. They are fun to make, they look fancy, and luckily they are really tasty too.
Makes 100-120 cookies
Ingredients:
Vanilla dough:
170 g butter, salted and room temperature
100 g confectionary sugar (powder sugar)
45 g almonds, bleached and grounded
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
255 g all-purpose flour
Chocolate dough:
170 g butter, salted and room temperature
100 g confectionary sugar (powder sugar)
40 g almonds, bleached and grounded
30 g unsweetened cocoa powder, I use Valrhona
1 egg yolk
½ teaspoon vanilla bean paste
255 g all-purpose flour
Directions:
Vanilla dough:
Cream the butter until soft and creamy. Add the confectionery sugar, mix until fully combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add the ground almonds, egg yolk, vanilla and flour, and mix until just blended. Be careful not to over mix the dough.
Roll the dough between two sheets of parchment paper into a large rectangle about ⅓ inch (9 mm) thick. Transfer the dough onto a baking sheet and refrigerate for a minimum of 3 hours until hardened.
Chocolate dough:
Follow the instructions for the vanilla dough. Add the cocoa with the ground almonds. Roll and chill the chocolate dough as for the vanilla dough.
Assemble the cookies:
Remove one of the doughs from the refrigerator, peel off the paper from both sides and set the dough onto a fresh sheet of parchment. Using a sharp knife, slice the dough lengthwise into square strips about ⅓ inch (9 mm) thick. Place the dough strips in the refrigerator, while repeating the other dough.
Remove dough strips from the refrigerator. Lay a strip of vanilla dough lengthwise on the baking sheet, then lay a strip of chocolate dough next to the vanilla, another strip of vanilla and finally another chocolate, so you now have 4 strips alternating colors. Press the three strips gently together so that they stick to one another. You can brush the sides with some diluted apricot preserve, to help the dough to glue together.
Do this with the rest of the strips, so you end up with logs of striped cookie dough. Place the logs on top of each other, so the chocolate and vanilla alternates and you have 4x4 colors per log.
Gently press the log together on all sides. Wrap the log with plastic wrap, a place in the refrigerator. Make more logs with the remaining dough.
Chill the logs for at least an hour before slicing.
Preheat the oven to 375℉ (190℃). Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
Slice into cookies about ¼ inch (6 mm) thick. Set the squares ½ inch (1 cm) apart on the baking sheet and bake for about 8 minutes, until the vanilla parts are lightly browned. If your oven is baking unevenly rotate the sheet halfway through. Cool on the parchment paper on a wire rack.
Store the completely cooled cookies in an airtight container.
Enjoy!