Shortbread Play-dough

These cookies are made by mixing chocolate and vanilla shortbread cookie dough to make awesome designs.  Anything you want really. It's a lot of fun to try and figure out how to make new designs.  I really like to make a checkerboard cookie and I always make a marbled cookie with the leftover scraps of dough.

The dough is formed into a log, so you just have to slice off however many cookies you'd like to eat, and refrigerate the rest!

This recipe was found in "Wacky Cakes and Kooky Cookies," a bargin bin purchase at Barnes & Noble.

Step 1: Mix Doughs

Vanilla Shortbread

1 1/4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 medium egg yolk
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons salted butter, diced
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted

Put sugar, vanilla, egg yolk and butter in a bowl and mix.  Then add the flour until just combined.  Shape the firm dough into a ball and wrap with plastic wrap.  Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Chocolate Shortbread
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 medium egg yolk
1 cup plus
2 tablespoons salted butter, diced
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
Put sugar, egg yolk and butter in a bowl and mix. Then add the flour and cocoa until just combined. Shape the firm dough into a ball and wrap with plastic wrap.  Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Step 2: Get to Playin'

Pretend like your dough is play-dough, and using your hands, a rolling pin, or whatever you can find to shape the dough into interesting designs.

To make the checker board, just roll out equal pieces of your chocolate and vanilla doughs.  Brush some egg wash on one layer of dough and lay the other piece of dough on top.  Then trim the edges of the dough to make a nice rectangle.  After that, it's just a matter of cutting the rectangle into strips and stacking the strips on top of each other (with a slathering of egg whites in between each layer to help them stick together).  Cut the block into strips again and rotate the stripes.... then,  you'll get a checkerboard!

To make the marbled look, just save all of your dough scraps from making other designs, and squish it all together into it's own log... turns out pretty every time!

Step 3: Cool Your Logs

Once you've made your awesome dough logs, wrap them in plastic wrap and refrigerate for another hour or so.

Step 4: Slice Off Cookies... Bake!

slice cookies between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thick (depends on how crunchy you like your shortbread)
Bake in a 400 degree oven for 12-14 min, until slightly golden.

Any unused dough logs can be refrigerated for a week or so, or frozen for a couple of months.