12 Days of Christmas Cookies -- Day 10: Red Hot Pinwheel Cookies

These are fun to eat and to look at.  Those are my favorite kind of cookie.  I was surprised by the flavor of the cookies when they came out of the oven.  Red Hots have a pretty powerful flavor, so I expected the cookies to  taste predominantly like a Red Hot.  The cookie dough tasted predominantly like a Red Hot before it went into the oven, but by the time it came out of the oven, the flavor was much more well balanced.  They ended up just having a pleasant cinnamon flavor.  


I've always strayed away from pinwheel cookies because they intimidated me.  I thought they'd require to much effort to get a pretty pinwheel.  I was surprised at how simple this was.  If you're feeling really festive, you could color the white part of the dough green for a very Christmasy cookie.  Clearly, I wasn't feeling so festive the day I made these.  Or, I was still out of green food coloring . . .  Anyway, these cookies take a lot more work than a lot of the 12 Days of Christmas Cookies I've already posted, but they're worth it. 


Source:  Good Housekeeping


Here's what you need:
2 cups Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 cup Cinnamon Red Hot Candies
3/4 cup Butter, softened
3/4 cup Sugar
1 Egg
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
Red Food Coloring


Here's what you do:
1.  Combine the flour, baking powder and salt.  Set aside.

2.  In a food processor, grand candies until finely ground.  Set aside. 


3.  Beat butter and sugar until creamy. 


4.  Add egg and vanilla to butter/sugar mixture. 


5.  Gradually add flour mixture until blended. 


6.  Divide the dough in half, keeping half in this bowl and putting the other half in another bowl. 


7.  In one bowl, added red hots and food coloring to color to desired shade of red.  Mix well. 


8.  Cut 4 pieces of waxed paper to the sme size (ideally about 17 inches by 12 inches). 


9.  Place one sheet of waxed paper on the counter.  Place the cinnamon cookie dough on that piece of paper.  Place another sheet of waxed paper on top of the dough.  Using your hands, roll the dough out to approximately 15 inch by 10 inch rectangle.  Repeat with the white dough and remaining waxed paper. 


10.  Refrigerate for about 10 minutes.

11. Remove dough from refrigerator and remove the top sheet of waxed paper from each dough.  Place white dough on counter with the long edge facing you.  Invert the red dough and place it on top of the white dough.  Starting on the long side facing you, roll the dough tightly together in a jelly-roll style. 


12.  When dough is fully rolled, wrap in plastic wrap and freeze for at least one hour (I kept mine in the freezer overnight). 


13.  Preheat oven to 325. 


14.  Remove log from freezer and slice into cookies. 


15.  Place cookies onto cookie sheet and bake for about 13 minutes. 


Enjoy!