25 Days of Baking: Day 7

I had the pleasure of participating in a cookie exchange this year. I was so excited to get the invite as I have always wanted to do one, but never had enough people to really give it a go. I did a small one last year with some girlfriends, but nothing to this magnitude! In all there were 14 gals that participated. Originally 16, but 2 backed out last minute (so I had already made enough cookies for 16). My kids didn't mind this as they didn't want me to take the ones I made.

I knew there was potential for a number of people so I wanted to make something fun, yet easy enough to mass produce. I knew decorated sugar cookies was out of the question as I would have been at that for days. I ended up deciding to make Christmas Pinwheel cookies. I hadn't made these before (again, something I had pinned) and thought they would be great for it!

I got the recipe here, but there are many versions of these out there. After eating them, they reminded me of Spritz cookies.

Christmas Pinwheel Cookies

3 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cups granulated sugar

1 cups butter (2 sticks)

1 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

red and green food coloring

1 cup holiday sprinkles

Christmas Pinwheel Cookies Directions

Cream sugar and butter until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix dry ingredients in separate bowl and add to butter mixture, mix well. Separate the dough in half and color one part red and one part green. Put one of the freshly made dough between two sheets of parchment paper and roll 11 x 9 inches and 1/4 inch thick. Repeat with the other color dough. Put the rolled dough including the parchment paper, on a cookie sheet and refrigerate for 10 minutes or longer. Take the top layer off both dough’s and lightly wet the tops. Sandwich the two colors together, using a paring knife trim the edges to make straight edges. Remove the top layer of paper and start rolling up and use the bottom layer of paper to pull it tight. If the dough tears you can just pinch it together. Poor the sprinkles onto a large platter and roll the log onto the sprinkles and press them in. Place the dough into the fridge for 15 minutes or longer. slice the dough into 1/4 inch slices and bake on parchment lined sheets. Bake at 325° F for 10 -15 minutes. Let cool.

Each batch makes about 4 dozen cookies, so I needed to make 5 batches of these. The first batch I split the dough and colored each half. My hands were stained red and I knew I was not going to get through 4 more batches of doing that. So for the last 4, I added food coloring in after I mixed the sugar and butter together. 2 green, 2 red. This was SO much easier and I would highly recommend just doing this. These cookies are delicious and excellent to eat while drinking your morning coffee. So save your hands and just make 2 batches. 1 red and 1 green (or whatever colors float your boat!)

In the end my cookies won most festive at the exchange, and I had a blast. One of the gals tallied up the cookies and figured that we had around 2866 cookies total! Can't wait to participate again next year!