This week's challenge comes from one of my many Women's Weekly books simple titled 'Chocolate'. This is one of my books that has a lot of overlap with others, each of which people have gotten me as presents. They all offer something different, though, so I don't mind.

I bake from these books a lot, and some of my favourite cake recipes come from or have been adapted from these books. The part this book has that the others don't is a cookie section. It's all about the old and classic in these ones. I've been wanting to try Pinwheel Cookies, on Choc-Vanilla Spiral Cookies as they are called in this book, for a while. The challenge was the perfect excuse.

I made a couple of changes to the method for ease. The first was in the creation of the dough. It will tell you after the creaming stage to divide the mixture in half and proceed from there. I prefer to complete the dough so there's an equal portion of flour to butter ratio, rather than trying to eyeball it. So I made the dough up, then halved it, then kneaded the cocoa in. I do this any time I'm turning one batch into two flavours, colours and it works pretty well.

Secondly, it will ask you to refrigerate the dough before rolling it out. I didn't see the point and figured it would only make the task incredibly difficult so I skipped it.

Rolling it up takes a little patience and care, but the result for doing so is worth it, particularly at the beginning. I noticed the photo in the book showed a lot of cookies that had gaps or cracks (or both) in the centre. I wanted to avoid that.

It won't be long before you have your cookie log. Wrap it up in plastic, throw it in the fridge and forget about it until you want cookies. I baked half the log tonight and will save the rest for the weekend.

I had thoughts of freezing the dough, as some cookie logs squish down when cut even after being in the fridge. This recipe was absolutely fine. It sets quite well in the fridge and didn't warp at all during cutting.

A little while in the oven and they're ready to nom.

The spirals came out so much neater than I was expecting for my first try. How you roll it will determine which swirl is in the middle, as well as how thick your dough is. My vanilla dough was a little thicker than the chocolate, simply because I wasn't very pedantic. But I like the way the chocolate swirl then becomes the focus.

The cookies sit right in the mid-range of soft vs. crunchy cookies. If you like your cookies really soft, you could take a few minutes off of the baking time. Otherwise, you'll have slightly crunchy, crumbly cookies. That suits me juuuust fine.

Here's the recipe from Women's Weekly [with a minor adjustment to the first step from me]:

Download the printable version of this recipe here.