Recipe: Peppermint Pinwheels

My girls have grown quite fond of Pinterest, have found several fun crafts that they have made (a few for Christmas gifts) and some recipes they'd like to try. I had very poor planning when it came to Christmas baking this year. In the past I have tried to plan ahead and spread out the purchasing of baking ingredients over a few month period, because let's just be honest, baking for holidays is not cheap. Well, I failed at that this year, so I told each of my girls to pick 1 or 2 things they'd like to make. Nan picked PB fudge (her usual) and Kat picked some Peppermint Pinwheels that she had seen on Pinterest. I made caramel corn. About a week after they decided on those goodies, I got a phone call asking if I'd make something for an upcoming bake sale at church. I decided instead of going out and buying more ingredients, we would just bring some of the Peppermint Pinwheels with us. No problem! Except that we have NEVER made Peppermint Pinwheels or any other type of Pinwheel and what if they didn't turn out. But there was no going back. So, I found a few recipes and settled on one I had found on All Recipes. They were similar in ingredients to the ones Kat had found on Pinterest. Basically a butter/sugar type cookie recipe. Let's just say it was an adventure that I'm not 100% convinced I'd repeat. Only because it was time consuming. I'm sure I'd do it again but at the end of the day making them, I wasn't so sure.

Here is a link to the actual recipe. I read through all the comments because on another recipe, so many people had commented on how difficult these were and how they didn't turn out...so when I found this one I made sure I read thoroughly any pointers people had. I also had some pointers from my fellow SRC members. 

The part that was time consuming was the chilling. It does work best to chill the dough at the different stages, however, I chilled mine too long and then had to wait longer for it to soften so it was workable. This takes patience and time so if you give it those two things, they'll work.

Recipe:
From All Recipes

4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 1/3 c. butter, softened
1 c. packed brown sugar
2/3 c. white sugar
2 eggs beaten
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
Red food coloring
peppermint extract

*One commenter mentioned not using brown sugar, but 1 1/2 c. white sugar instead helping the dough to be more "white" and they thought that maybe the brown sugar made it harder to work with. I used sugars according to the recipe and it seemed fine. Sure the white dough was more tan but I think it was fine.

Directions:

1. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Resift in to another bowl. *I don't own a sifter so I just used a whisk and whisked the flour for a bit.

2. Beat the butter with the brown and white sugars in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla until smooth.

3. Gradually stir in flour until evenly blended. Divide dough in half. Take half of the dough out of the bowl and place on a piece of saran wrap. Form into a rectangle, wrap and place in fridge. Take red food coloring and add to remaining dough until it is the desired color of red that you desire. Do the same to this dough as you did with the other, placing it in the fridge. *You could try rolling these out without chilling, but several commenters said they had a hard time with it it not holding well, and being a bit sticky...so I chilled mine overnight. I think 30 minutes to an hour would be sufficient.

(I think next time I would have flattened this a bit more because they were so chilled, it took awhile to soften and roll out)

4. Remove from fridge and place each piece between two sheets of wax paper. Roll out to 1/4" thickness. At this point if you feel dough is too soft, place it back in the fridge for 20-30 minutes. I left mine in too long and then couldn't roll it. So had to let it soften a bit...

(The big key is to roll it between wax paper)

5. place Red dough on top of white dough (or however you want to do it). Beginning at one edge (long edge) roll doughs together to make a log. I found that using the wax paper as a guide helped with the rolling and keeping the dough from falling apart and making a nice tight roll. My roll was thicker in the middle then at the ends...not sure why, so some cookies were smaller than others. After rolling into the log we rolled the log in little white candies (like for cupcakes..not sure what they're called), you could also roll them in crushed candy canes or sprinkles. Wrap in wax paper and place in freezer for about an hour. 

(roll it tightly so that when it bakes the swirls stay defined)

6. Remove from freezer. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Use parchment paper to line cookie sheets. Cut dough at about 1/8-1/4" thick. Place on cookie sheets and bake for about 7 minutes or until edges are lightly browned...watch carefully. 

 (aren't they pretty)

End result is a pretty and lightly flavored cookie. You could tailor this with different flavors and different colors. It would be cute too to put wooden stick on it so it looked like lollipop cookies. 

With Joy UNquenchable,