Black & White Pinwheel Biscuits.
A pinwheel biscuit is a beautiful thing to behold!
It’s the contrast of the dark and the light, of the vanilla and the chocolate layers together, wrapped around itself making a pretty wheel of biscuit.
Not too sweet, this biscuit is the perfect thing to sit on a plate when visitors come knocking.
With only one dough to make, the batch divided in two and then cocoa added to one half, the two pieces meld together to become a delicious bite.
The trick to making these look good is to get them rolled out to the same size, and that’s not difficult to do.
This way once stacked, rolled tightly into a spiral and cut, what’s left are perfect little bites of crispy chocolate and vanilla biscuits.
Go on, give it a go and enjoy your sweet life!
Spirals of chocolate and vanilla
What You Need
300g Plain Flour - Sifted
125g Butter – Softened – See Tip Box
100g Icing Sugar - Sifted
8g Castor Sugar
1 Tbsp Cocoa – Sifted – See Tip box
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Egg
1 Egg White
Ingredients for the basic dough
How It’s Done
Place the flour, icing sugar, castor sugar, vanilla extract, and 1 egg into the bowl of an electric mixer and use a beat attachment to mix everything together until it starts to come together into a dough
Tip the mixture out onto a clean work-surface and bring it together into a ball of dough
Divide the dough into two equal pieces.
Make a big dip in one piece of dough and put the 1 tbsp of cocoa into the dip.
Use your hands to incorporate the cocoa powder into the dough until its evenly mixed in.
One dough and two flavours
Dust a little flour onto the clean work-surface
Roll each piece of dough out so that they are both the same size
Brush one piece of dough with egg white and then lay the other piece of dough in top.
Brush more egg white onto the top of the top piece of dough.
From the long side of the dough, start to roll the dough up (keeping the roll tight) until both doughs are rolled up into a spiral
Brush with egg white and then roll up
Wrap the dough in cling film and place it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes - See Tip Box
Heat the oven to 170c
Line a couple of oven trays with non-stick baking parchment.
Once the dough has been chilled, use a very sharp knife and cut the roll into 3-5cm slices.
Try to make the slices even in width
Lay the slices on the prepared trays, leaving 1 inch between each slice.
Place the trays into the hot oven and bake for 10-12 minutes - making sure that the vanilla piece of the biscuit doesn’t get brown.
Let the biscuits cool on the tray
Eat immediately or store in an airtight container for a few days.
Lay the slices on the prepared tray and into the hot oven
Tip Box
Cocoa – don’t substitute the cocoa for drinking chocolate – drinking chocolate is full of sugar
Butter – 1) I’ve used both butter and goat butter when making these biscuits in the past, and they always turn out wonderfully
2) I always use salted butter when baking, so I don’t add any extra salt. But if you only have unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt to the mixture.
Chill - This is a great dough to make ahead. Make the dough until the chill stage and keep in the fridge until ready to use.
Enjoy one with a cup of tea.
