The Powers of the Pinwheel Cookie
by Ciaran Blumenfeld, posted on May 12th, 2010 in The Food Issue
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It’s been well over a decade since my grandmother passed away, my Nani. I have so many fond memories, and so many that are tied to food. My grandmother was a great baker, and famous for her chocolate cake and pies. But it’s the pinwheel cookies that made the biggest impression on my cousins and on me.
As kids we all campaigned for favor – we all wanted to be the one who got to help, who got to lick the bowl and who got to eat the first cookie. But we couldn’t just leave it at that. A cookie is not just a cookie, at least not in my family.
To this day, whenever we get together, we debate over which tasted better, the chocolate or the vanilla dough. It’s never been settled, but we have identified four distinct pinwheel cookie camps.
The Chocolate Camp merely tolerates the vanilla. They see it as a necessary evil, a baseline and raw material from which we derive the all important chocolate dough. They aren’t interested in vanilla, except as a natural resource to be used up in the production of chocolate dough making.
The Vanilla Camp feels that chocolate, while attractive, is wrecking everything, like global warming. Chocolate is the villain destroying the cookie’s purity. Some other flavor, or better yet a vegetable based coloring would make for an equally attractive cookie, sans chocolate. While they enjoy the lovely pattern that Chocolate brings to the table, they would prefer a method of cookie preparation that made more of an effort to preserve the Vanilla flavor.
The Peaceniks are fine with both vanilla and chocolate and do their best to help both get along, at both the snack table and in their stomachs. They go to great lengths not to offend anyone, carefully nibbling off one flavor at a time in circular routes around the cookie. This is great fun for all the OCD family members.
Finally, the Butt Camp (I am not making this up, I swear) feels that Chocolate, Vanilla and the Peaceniks are all crazy. The only good cookies in the batch are the mashed up mish moshes without a spiral, cut off the ends of the roll. These cookies lack the artifice and beauty but if you want to taste what a “real” good cookie tastes like, you will fight to the death for chance to gobble up one of these rare cookie butts.
Looking for more fun with Pinwheel Cookies? Pull a cookie from a jar (my grandmother’s cookie jar resembled a large cheerful orange mushroom, but any cookie jar that is not transparent will do) and count the spirals. No cheating and eating! That is how many children you will have. Seeking more information? Count the spirals and use that number to play the game MASH. Our family is renowned for our psychic abilities, so it only makes sense that our cookies could predict the future, as well. Note: being a member of the Butt Camp was also an indication that you would have boys.
One of the things I inherited from my grandmother is her old wooden rolling pin. Smooth, simple and oblong, burnished by time and use it’s practically a work of art. Even now it clings to the faint aroma of her cookies – butter, flour. How is this possible after so long? I honestly don’t know. I do know that this smell brings me right back. It makes me want to bake a batch and start a debate. I wonder which camps my kids will fall into? If I reach into the jar will I come out with a cookie with four spirals? There’s only one way to find out!
Pinwheel Cookies:
8oz butter
1 c sugar
2 egg yolks
2 squares unsweetened chocolate
3 c flour
3 tsp baking powder
about 6 TBSP milk
1 tsp vanilla
Combine butter, sugar & egg yolks. Add flour and baking powder alternately with milk. Add vanilla.
Melt chocolate.
Knead dough lightly by hand and divide into two balls. Add chocolate to half of the dough. Divide both balls in half, so you have two chocolate and two vanilla.
Take one vanilla and one chocolate ball. Spread out waxed paper on counter, about 17 inches long. Put vanilla dough on bottom, chocolate dough on top on the waxed paper. Smash down gently and carefully roll out the two evenly to about 9×13 inches long (leaving extra wax paper on all edges). Roll the dough up again, into a 13 inch long log, taking care not to roll in the wax paper! Wrap the wax paper around the log. Carefully twist the ends of the wax paper to secure. Repeat this process for the other two balls to make a second log.
Chill dough in fridge for at least 1 hr, or up to a day. Slice with sharp knife into 1/4 inch rounds and bake at 400 degrees for 8 minutes or so. Do not brown them! Pinwheels should just start to get golden. Let them firm up for a few minutes before removing from baking sheet. Serve with milk, tea or coffee.
Syndi Says:
