Christmas checkered cookies

Merry Christmas everyone! I had a pretty busy Christmas this year. Aside from work, (busy with centerpieces!) I did quite a bit of baking and knitting. I made my brother a scarf as part of his Christmas gift. I had to pull 2 all nighters just to finish it. x_X...but it was worth it! I also made a lot of cookies as small gifts for my coworkers and a batch of doggie biscuits for my fiance's family dog, Kobe. He is such a cute dog!

I was given quite a bit of kitchen related Christmas gifts this year. I'm such a lucky girl! Thank you very much for the wonderful gifts! I got my pink kitchenAid stand mixer. Its been my #1 item on my wishlist for the longest time! so happy!~  I also got a bunch of Cuisinart pans, pots, toaster, kettle, etc from my sister and brother in law. They brought them over from the states in one of their luggage. It was opened for custom inspection coz of the amount of metal detected. They never returned the luggage lock to them. >__> kinda sucks. They probably broke it or something. I really appreciate the thoughtfulness! and sorry about the trouble!

This year I wanted to try making some checkered cookies. I discovered checkered cookies from one of my Japanese craft books. It was a book on how to make different food items from felt fabric. There was a section on bakery goods and there it was. I searched around after and discovered its just a combination of chocolate and non chocolate butter dough cut into stripes, stacked together, and cut into slices. I gave the recipe a try and it was more work than it sounds. lol As usual, I changed the recipe slightly and the cookies turned out delicious!~

Christmas Checkered Cookies

Makes: approx 8 dozen

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter (softened)

4 cups all purpose flour

2 eggs

1 cup brown sugar (packed)

1/2 cup of sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

2 oz Hershey's semi sweet chocolate chips

1 tsp Hershey's cocoa powder

1 tsp salt

Instructions:

1. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, combine butter and sugars. Cream them with a hand mixer until well blended. Beat in eggs and vanilla extract. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Mix until all the ingredients are mixed together, forming a nice dough.. Set aside.

3. In a small saucepan, fill it with water 1/3 to half way up. Place a small glass bowl inside. Turn the stove on to medium heat. Place chocolate chips in the bowl. Let the chocolate chips melt completely. Remove bowl from saucepan and let it cool down.

4. Divide the dough into 4 equal portions. Plastic wrap 2 portions individually, and set aside. Add 1/2 tsp of cocoa powder and half of the melted chocolate chips to each of the 2 unwrapped dough. Knead the dough on a clean surface till the chocolate are well blended into the dough. (This part gets quite messy) Once the 2 chocolate dough are done, plastic wrap them individually. Place all 4 dough in the fridge and chill for about an hour.

5. Take 1 chocolate dough and 1 plain dough out from the fridge. Divide each dough in half. Roll the 4 doughs individually between 2 sheets of wax paper and form the flat dough into 6" x 4" rectangle. Set aside the rectangular dough on a sheet of wax paper. Chill for 1/2 hour. Repeat the process for the other 2 dough portions in the fridge.

6. Remove the first batch of chilled rectangular dough from the fridge. Cut each rectangle into 8 equal size strips. Stack the strips in groups of 4, alternating the chocolate and plain strips. Stack 4 sets of the alternated strips on top of each other to form a rectangular block. There should be 16 strips stacked together. Wrap the block with plastic wrap or wax paper. Chill for 1 hour. Repeat the process with the remaining dough.

7. Preheat oven to 375 °F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

8. Remove dough from fridge. Unwrap and cut each rectangular dough into 1/4" slices. Place them on the baking sheet, leaving about 1" space apart.

9. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the edges turn slightly golden brown. Let the cookies cool on cooling rack. Repeat the process till all the dough are baked.

done!