Festive red and green Christmas Pinwheel Cookies are fun and easy to make from a basic sugar cookie dough. Just roll, layer, slice and bake.

Pinwheel cookies are a colorful and festive addition to any Christmas celebration. A basic cookie dough recipe is colored red and green. Swirl it together and refrigerate. Then slice and bake. 

If you prefer a drop cookie, check out these Italian Lemon Cookies. 

 

Red and Green Christmas Pinwheel Cookies

Begin by making the cookie dough. Add flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda to a small bowl and mix well.

Add butter and sugars to a mixing bowl and cream, on medium high speed, until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Add in flour mixture until dough forms.

Divide dough in half and put in to two separate bowls. Or just leave one half in the mixing bowl and put the other half in a different bowl so you’ll have less dishes to do.

Add green coloring and beat until evenly colored. Rinse beater and bowl and dry. Add remaining dough and red coloring and beat until combined well.

I prefer to use gel food coloring. It gives a much better color with much less food coloring.  Use a toothpick and just put a little bit of coloring in the dough at a time until you get the color you want.

Once each half of the dough is the color you like, divide each of the colored doughs in half again. Put each 1/4 of the dough on it’s own wax paper sheet.b Roll each part (2 red and 2 green) flat between 2 pieces of wax paper about 1/4″ thick into a 9 x 6 rectangle size.

Keep the dough pieces on their wax paper sheets and refrigerate for about 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, remove dough from the refrigerator and place a red on top of a green dough.

Gently begin to roll from the short end to create a log. Repeat so you have two logs.

Wrap each log securely in wax paper and return to the refrigerator for an hour.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Unroll dough from wax paper and slice into 3/8 inch sections.

Place onto a cookie sheet, 1″ apart and bake for 7-9 minutes or until set and bottoms just begin to brown. Let cool completely on a wire rack.

The recipe makes 2 dozen if you slice the cookies at 3/8″.  If you slice into 1/4″ sections, try baking 5-7 minutes and checking. You’ll get about 4-5 dozen cookies.

Store in an air tight container to keep them fresh.

[