Christmas Checkerboard Cookies

These are some cookies I made several years ago that I thought I would share today to get into the Christmas mood. They are simple Christmas checkerboard cookies. They use a basic cookie dough that is a cross between shortbread cookies and sugar cookies. The recipe then shows how to make pinwheel (swirls), checkerboard (like these), or cloverleaf (three different color rounds) designs with the cookies. Of course you can always just roll the cookies in a log or in shapes and slice and bake them, but these cookies are meant more for show (they taste good, but they are nothing special). Most recipes for pinwheels/checkerboards call for a chocolate and a vanilla dough, so cocoa or melted chocolate is usually added to half of the dough. Because it was close to Christmas, I decided to tint half of the dough red and half of the dough green. This can be done with a variety of colors, and can be varied to match the season. The recipe featured some pastel colors, which looked quite nice. Now, I am usually not a huge fan of adding food coloring to food unnecessarily but I think these cookies look pretty nice and match the Christmas mood. As you can see, my checkerboards are not perfectly even. This is difficult to achieve  and you must ensure the doughs are completely even, lined up, and rolled out uniformly. Some checkerboard cookies don't just have four squares, they feature eight or even more squares, which would be even trickier! There are even checkerboard cake recipes, which look pretty neat. The key to success with checkerboard cookies is to prepare in advance so the dough can be chilled. Often the dough will need to be chilled after mixing, and again later after it is set in the checkerboard design before baking. This helps the dough cut more uniformly. One last word of caution: the color needs to be kneaded into the dough, which can get a bit messy. A pair of plastic gloves might be a good idea!