Checkerboard Cookie Recipe

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It’s Valentine’s Day, and in our house that means there will be a special baked treat: pink and white checkerboard cookies!  For the last few years my husband and I have a deal that in lieu of gifts for each other he cooks a special dinner and I bake a special dessert for us to enjoy together.  It’s become a really nice tradition and we like that we are doing something less commercial than typical.

My sweet Hubby is working this year on Valentine’s Day, so we will be celebrating with our dinner and dessert on another day, but that didn’t stop me from baking a special cookie!  Checkerboard cookies are typically done in vanilla and chocolate, but I found some pretty pastel pink food colouring and it inspired me to try something a little different.  Baby J helped, look at those precious little toes covered in icing sugar!  When she woke up this morning there was a little trail of hearts leading to a monkey stuffed animal and a dinosaur book (which were mine as a child).  This girl is still completely obsessed with Dinosaurs (check out her Dinos and Donuts 2nd Birthday Party), and not just any old dinosaurs but the Brachiosaurus and Baryonyx in particular.  Her other obsession is animals; I made her a book with every animal picture I could think of and she names them in English and French.  The vocabulary on this girl is so precious, and impressive!  Baby K had some hand-me-down rattles waiting for him, too.

The checkerboard cookie recipe is super simple and it’s from one of my favourite bakers, Anna Olson.  It’s a soft dough that’s really easy to handle and tastes great.  I changed it up a little bit by doing the pink instead of chocolate and by eliminating the cookie frame.  The confusing part is constructing the checkerboard.  I read numerous explanations online and it just wasn’t making sense at all until I watched a video.  So, I thought I would really spell it out step by step here!   And FYI: there are 4 hours of fridge time needed for dough chilling before these bad boys can be baked.

 

Checkerboard Cookie Recipe and Tutorial

adapted from Anna Olson

 

White Vanilla Cookie Dough

1 cup room temperature unsalted butter

1 cup icing sugar

0.5 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla

2.5 cups all purpose flour

0.5 tsp salt

 

Pink Vanilla Cookie Dough

1 cup room temperature unsalted butter

1 cup icing sugar

0.5 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla

2.5 cups all purpose flour

0.5 tsp salt

Food colouring (I used Wilton’s Rose Petal Pink)

one: Vanilla Dough: Using the paddle attachment, beat the butter with the sugars.  Add the egg, egg yolk and vanilla.  Add the flour and salt and mix until it comes together as a soft dough.  Shape it into two discs, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours until firm.

two: Pink Dough: repeat step one, adding the food colouring after adding the flour once the dough comes together.  It doesn’t have to be pink, and it doesn’t have to be vanilla!

three: Checkerboard Preparation:  Ok, let’s spell this out really basically.  You’ve got four discs of dough in your fridge, two that are vanilla and two that are pink.  Take out one vanilla dough disc and one pink dough disc.  Lay out a large piece of plastic wrap.  Split your vanilla dough disc in half and put one half on the plastic wrap.  Use your hands to shape it into a rectangle that’s about 5 x 8 inches and 0.5 inch thick…says Anna’s recipe but that didn’t happen for me at all–mine was 4.5 x 8 inches and maybe 0.25 inch thick, I don’t know how you could make a rectangle that size be that thick!  I never roll dough on flour on the counter, I always use plastic wrap to sandwich the dough between the counter and the rolling pin so that it doesn’t stick and you don’t need to add more flour.  This dough is so soft that you can get it almost right with just your hands, but use the rolling pin to get it perfect.  Then set it aside and repeat with the other half of the vanilla dough disc.  Then repeat this whole step with the pink dough.

four: Dough Layers: OK, now you have four rectangles of dough on your counter top, two that are vanilla and two that are pink.  Start with a vanilla as your bottom layer.  Brush the top of that vanilla dough layer with cold water on a pastry brush, then place one of the pink dough layers on top.  Now brush the top of the pink dough layer with cold water on a pastry brush, then place the other vanilla layer on top.  Finally, brush the top of the vanilla layer with cold water on a pastry brush and place the final pink layer on top.  If it feels too soft you can put this whole thing back into the fridge to firm up for 10 minutes.

five: Cut strips: Alright, now you have a big rectangle of dough made up of four alternating layers.  It’s time to cut it into strips.  First, cut the edges off to make it a neat, tidy and perfect rectangle.  Next, cut the rectangle into 8 long 0.5 inch wide strips (if you imagined the rectangle is a piece of printer paper, you’re cutting from the left side to the right side, not the top to the bottom, does that make sense?).

six: Assemble strips: Now you have 8 thin long strips of 4 layered dough.  Let these fall onto their sides so that instead of having dough stacked on top of each other you have layers of dough stacked side by side.  Start with a layer that has vanilla on the far left.  Brush the top of it with the cold water and place an upside down strip (so that the pink stripe is on the far left) on top of it.  Now brush the top of that layer with water and place a strip on top that has vanilla on the far left.  Now brush the top of that layer with water and place a strip on top that has pink on the far left.  That’s it, the checkerboard roll is done.  There are still four strips of dough on your cutting board—start this step over using those pieces to make a second roll.  Wrap these rolls in plastic wrap and let them chill in the fridge for another two hours to firm up.

seven: Repeat: You now have two checkerboard rolls, one vanilla dough disc and one pink dough disc in the fridge.  Take out the two discs and repeat steps 3-6.  Now you have four checkerboard rolls in the fridge, and possibly some left overs from the trimming.  I just used my hands to fold the leftovers together and it created a beautiful marble effect, really pretty!  I made these into logs and put them into the freezer for another baking day.

eight: Cut: Preheat your oven to 350 F.  You’ll need a baking sheet for each checkerboard dough log, lined with parchment or a Silpat.  Take your logs out of the fridge and just slightly trim the ends to reveal a perfectly gorgeous checkerboard pattern.  Slice 0.25 inch thick cookies and place them 1 inch apart on the sheet.  I was able to get 28 cookies per log for two logs which was more than enough, so I froze the other two logs.  Presumably they would produce that many as well, so you’re looking at about 112 cookies!  Bake for about 12 minutes until the bottoms are just barely turning light golden and they come off the baking sheet easily.  Let them cool on the tray before giving them to your Valentine.

Let me know what other flavour/colour combinations you think could work!  I was thinking it would be neat to try a white coconut dough with a green lime dough, what do you think?  Most of all, have a Happy Valentine’s Day, my friends—eat something a little extra sweet today and also be a little extra sweet today!

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Goldtouch Cookie Sheets: Williams-Sonoma

Silpats: Williams-Sonoma

The Cartier was a graduation gift and the Forever Flowers an anniversary gift, I am so loved!

Camera: Olympus O-MD E-M10 Mark II with 14-42mm IIR lens