Claire Saffitz's Pistachio Pinwheel Cookies | NYT Cooking

you can see we bite into it makes like little stripes green hey everyone i'm claire saphis i am in my kitchen in my apartment and today i'm going to show you a recipe from my new cookbook dessert person it is for pistachio pinwheels and this is a recipe i plan on making this holiday season i know that this time of year looks really different for a lot of folks but it's all the more reason to get in the kitchen and find some comfort in baking one thing i discovered while writing this book is that i really like eating cookies but i don't love making cookies because to me they're not as exciting as other kinds of desserts like cakes or pies which can use seasonal produce but that said the holidays is one time where i do get really into cookie baking but i have important criteria for a cookie recipe i don't want a recipe to be something i have to sit there and painstakingly decorate just to make it look festive so one reason why i really like this pistachio pan milk cookie is that they're self-decorating like the decoration is baked into the cookie literally one of the things that makes this recipe i think easier than it might appear is that there is one base dough that creates the two colors and the whole thing comes together in the food processor the first step is going to be grinding the pistachios obviously this is an important ingredient they are pistachio pinwheels just so you have maximum contrast in the final cookie between the green spiral and the rest of the cookie try to find super green pistachios and if you can find blanched ones that's even better these pistachios are actually unblanched so they have that papery skin on them it's not that important but the more skins you remove the greener that spiral will be all right so into the food processor i'm gonna pulse it because i want to grind them to a fine powder but i do not want to make pistachio butter so the more finely ground you get your pistachios the more even that green layer will be okay so this looks good and now i'm going to build the rest of the dough so the first thing that goes in is some room temperature butter and then powdered sugar so that goes right in and also because we're using the food processor you don't have to sift it it's fine if there's lumps those will all smooth out now the first thing is to process this together until the mixture is light and creamy and a little fluffy i remember as a kid my mom would be baking something i just remember like eating the butter and sugar and being like there is no more delicious thing in the world than butter and sugar mixed together and i still stand by that so now to this we're gonna add two yolks i'm also gonna add some almond extract almond extract is divisive some people hate it i love it if you don't like it use vanilla if you don't want to use vanilla you could put a little like lemon zest in there all right so here's my dough now it's time to divide my dough and to create the two layers the plain almond version is the base of the cookie the pistachio version goes on top so i actually want two-thirds of the dough for the almond and one-third for the pistachio this is for the almonds the remaining third i'm going to leave in the food processor and just put it aside to the two-thirds mixture i add my almond flour and this i'm going to work in with the spatula until i have a uniform smooth dough this version is actually from unblanched almonds so this has some brown specks so that just means that i'll have more kind of texture in my layers i first want to spread out the almond dough and then i'm going to chill that while i do the pistachio just so that layer has a chance to firm up this is where it makes sense not to rush anything because the more even a slab you have the better your pinwheels are going to look now if you're really a stickler for straight edges as i am you can even fold up the edges of the parchment paper so you're kind of making like an envelope and that will just flatten everything out to help fill in some of those edges so you have really straight sides so in order to create a solid surface for applying the pistachio dough i want to show this in the refrigerator so the butter firms up and the whole dough becomes more solid and now i'm going to finish making the pistachio dough so the ground pistachios go in and i'm going to pulse this until i have a nice uniform green color once you have the dough kind of forming like a little bit of a ball around the blade of the mixer that's when you're basically there when someone invents a food processor where nothing gets stuck that'll be a great day basically what i do is take the pistachio dough and make dollops of it all around the surface of the almond i'm going to go right to the edges on the short sides but i'm going to leave a little bit of a lip on the longer sides even though it's the same dough that just helps make a nicer looking spiral i think this is good the last thing to do is to roll this up i say like a jelly roll i don't know if that's a meaningful reference for people because i don't know who makes jelly rolls anymore but basically you just roll it into a spiral you coax the dough to fold onto itself take this little folded edge of parchment and cover it above the dough and kind of pull it away from me so it's horizontal with the surface now i'm going to roll the entire thing in the parchment paper i take the side furthest for me i actually fold it up and over and now i've sealed that longer edge i want to show you a great trick for getting a very round log of dough i'm pulling one end down and around toward me then take any kind of long straight edge this is a tool for chocolate work um i don't know why i bought it i don't really do chocolate work but it is convenient to have and you're going to angle this down and into that crease and i'm going to push toward the dough this is eliminating air pockets it is applying a little bit of pressure and now i have something very very round and this has to chill before i can slice it okay so i actually have a swap that i'm going to show you of an already chilled blog of dough and the only reason i'm telling you that is because that is the version where i went and peeled the pistachios and took me like an hour and actually looking at the version that i just put in that was slightly darker i kind of like that color better so i'm just saying it right now there's really no point in killing your pistachios it's super super solid this has been actually in the freezer because i made it a couple days ago and then i let it thaw overnight in the fridge and one reason why i love slice and bake is because like then the whole thing is ready to go and you make a bunch of cookies the last step before i slice is to coat the entire exterior of the log in some demerara sugar and sometimes when i do a slicing bake cookie i'll coat the exterior in a little egg wash to get the sugar to stick but i don't have any problems getting the sugar to adhere to this dough so this gives it a little extra sweetness obviously a little nice crunch and also kind of a sparkly border which is really nice all right so that looks good it's well coated i'm just going to slice off a really thin layer from the side and that's to expose that green spiral which you can see when you're slicing the cookies i have a couple of tips for keeping the shape round and even i'm using a thin bladed very sharp knife because you don't want it to force itself down into the dough and separate it the other tip is to constantly rotate the log as you cut and that is to basically prevent any one side from flattening on the surface so the more you kind of move the log around and cut the more round you'll be wow so this spiral is looking really really nice you can see how it's a little thinner in the middle at the end and that is because we basically like tapered off the thickness of that slab they spread a little bit they don't spread a lot leave at least an inch in between the cookies while i cut the other half i'll probably just throw this in the fridge just so it doesn't warm up too much and then i'm going to cut the rest and we're going to bake it doesn't matter what temperature it is outside outside space i don't know but it is always at 1 000 degrees in here when i have this on i'm going to bake these all at the same time in the oven so i want one tray on the upper third and one tray in the lower third [Music] i baked them until i started to see a golden brown edge i want the bottom to be about this color so now i'm just going to transfer them to wire rack they'll cool very very quickly this is the kind of cookie i prefer buttery tender and also lovely in its flavor almond and pistachio i love that lovely like sable texture kind of dissolves in your mouth they're really good fresh too so i highly recommend this recipe for the holidays it's freezable you can make a lot at once it has a beautiful building decoration and even though the holidays are going to be different this year that's no reason not to get in the kitchen and make something that makes you happy so happy baking this holiday season and i hope you give this a try [Music] you

Channel: NYT Cooking

Views: 518,121

Keywords: cooking, cooks, recipes, recipe, how-to, how to, kitchen, new york times, new york times cooking, nyt cooking, nyt, nytimes, cookie, cookies, cookie week, how to make cookies, baking, how to bake cookies, claire saffitz, dessert person, pistachio, pistachio pinwheels, holiday cookies, cookie box, shortbread, sugar, butter, almond

Id: 4nshlz1FL-E

Length: 8min 56sec (536 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020