How To Bake Checkerboard Cookies

Just like most moms out there, I’d like my daughter to eat healthy so I go extra lengths by preparing my daughter’s snack at school. Unfortunately, my daughter does not like sandwiches and other savory snacks but she’ll devour anything sweet like cookies and cupcakes. To my relief, she is not as fond as eating candies all the time thank goodness.

When it comes to snacks, one of her favorites is the checkerboard cookies. It is a simple shortbread cookie recipe that has the checkerboard design in it just like what you see in the picture. The chocolate layer is made from the same shortbread cookie recipe but chocolate is added to it.  Unfortunately, this batch was made in a hurry so the checkerboard pattern is not as evident in the picture.

There are two components when making the checkerboard cookies and these are the ordinary shortbread recipe and the chocolate shortbread recipe. I have listed the ingredients for both components as follows:

Ordinary Shortbread Recipe                                                        

½ cup sugar                                                                                   

½ cup soft butter                                                                         

1 ½ cup sifted all purpose flour                                                       

                                                                                                 

Chocolate Shortbread Recipe

½ cup sugar                                                                                   

½ cup soft butter                                                                         

1 cup sifted all purpose flour    

½ cup chocolate powder

If you notice, the ingredients are the same for both components except for the chocolate powder.  Thus, the procedure in making the cookie dough is the same for both recipes. In this recipe, I used Nutella as a substitute to chocolate powder.

Making the cookie dough is very easy and you only need to mix the ingredients thoroughly. Once thoroughly mixed, put both cookie dough in a Ceram wrap and keep them refrigerated for about an hour or until the dough has hardened.

Now for the fun part. Get a rolling pin and flatten the dough. Do this while the dough is still in the Ceram wrap. Use a blunt knife to straighten the edges of the dough. The dough should have the same size, shape and thickness as possible.

Once done, place the white dough on top of the chocolate dough. Using a pizza cutter or a knife, cut a thin strip of the layered dough and add the strip to the whole dough to create four layers total. You can make as many layers as you want but for this tutorial, I only did four.

Cut the dough into tiny cubes and arrange two cubes to create the checkerboard pattern. Make as many cubes as you want until you are done. Put all of the cubes in a cookie sheet lined with wax paper and bake them at 150⁰ Celsius for 15 minutes or until done. If you don’t have an oven, you can also use your oven toaster but make sure to cover the cookie sheet with aluminum foil to prevent the cookies from burning.