Guest Post, 17Recipes: Chocolate-Vanilla Pinwheel Cookies

Ingredients

For the Vanilla Base dough:
• 4 cups almond meal (448 g)
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
• ¼ cup honey
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• ½ cup coconut oil or grass-fed butter, melted
For the Chocolate Spiral dough:
• ½ of the vanilla base dough
• 6 tablespoons cocoa
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil or grass-fed butter

Instructions

1. Start by making the vanilla base dough: Combine the almond meal, salt, and soda in a food processor until well mixed. Add honey, eggs, vanilla and oil and process until well combined and the dough comes together in a ball. The dough will be very soft and fairly sticky.
2. Divide dough in half and set aside.
3. Combine cocoa, honey and oil in a food processor. Add one of the vanilla dough halves in chunks to the cocoa mixture. Process until just combined into a ball.
4. Place the ball of vanilla dough on a sheet of cellophane. Press down with your palm to form a thick oval shape. Place a second sheet of cellophane on top of the dough. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough until it is about 8 to 9 inches square. (Because the rolling process generally produces more of an oval shape, you may want to trim the round ends of the rolled dough, reattach them to the corners of the dough and roll again to attain your rough square.) Set aside.
5. Repeat the exact same rolling process for the chocolate spiral dough.
6. Remove the top layer of cellophane from both dough squares. Now, carefully align and lay one of the dough squares on top of the other so that the vanilla dough and chocolate dough meet (there should not be cellophane separating the layers). I like to lift the dough from beneath with a rolling pin to help me move it and place it.
7. Peel the top layer of cellophane and trim the edges of the stacked dough to make a more precise (but not necessarily perfect) square or rectangle.
8. Starting from the near edge of the dough, gently roll the dough away from you to form a tight log, peeling away the remaining cellophane as you go. Wrap the log in one of the cellophane pieces and gently roll back in forth under your palms to help assure the dough layers are fully adhered together.
9. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. (At this point, you can also freeze the dough log for later use. Just place it back in the refrigerator for several hours before you want to use it.)
10. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
11. Cut the log at about 3/8-inch increments for each cookie. I find it helpful to have a jar of hot water and a dish towel nearby so that I can clean the knife after every cut.
12. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone baking mat and bake for about 8 minutes, or until the cookies are just starting to brown.