I’m getting a very late start on Christmas Cookies, and I’ll post more about them later, but I wanted to post about this year’s addition to the rotation: Checkerboard Cookies! I don’t mess with the cookie lineup lightly, but these are a complete winner and have permanently replaced the previous Zebra Icebox Cookies (from Jann Johnson’s The Art of the Cookie).

I have had good luck with Smitten Kitchen’s Apple Crumb Cake recipe, so when I read this cookie article, I knew I wanted to give it a try. Also, her photos are great!

I decided to make a double batch, and you gotta love a cookie project that involves starting with a pencil and paper to work out the math of doubling the recipe. It was complicated by the very smart twist in the recipe to hold back some of the flour so that after the dough is divided in half (to make the chocolate part by adding cocoa powder) the vanilla part gets an analogous addition of flour — so that the consistencies remain the same. (The issue of unequal consistencies was the biggest flaw in the Zebra cookie recipe, btw.)

Having worked it all out (answer: 2C of flour for the vanilla, 1½C of flour + ½C of cocoa powder for the chocolate) it was a relatively simple dough to make. The recipe describes this as a “sable” cookie, which includes a raw egg yolk. Also, this recipe uses both granulated and confectioner’s sugar, which I’m guessing contributes to the lovely, fine-grained, melt-in-your-mouth texture. These really are lovely-looking and lovely-tasting cookies!

I have to confess that I described these to my sister as “fussy”, but she’s right that anyone who spends the hours that I do making these (→) diabolical cuties (using a lab-quality balance to make them consistent in size; 3.4g each, if you’re curious) has no right to call any cookie “fussy”. I mean, really. I think what I meant, rather than “fussy”, was: “I have no earthly clue what I’m doing with these”. One illustration of this statement: My ratio of “presentable” checkerboard cookies to ones that are “just for the cook” was about 2:1, so there’s definite room for improvement!

I tried to form the checkerboards in two rounds, and there were big improvements between rounds 1 and 2, so this seems like something I can get more comfortable with over time. Basically, there couldn’t be a more perfect addition to the Ikeda Christmas Cookie lineup: A delicious and beautiful cookie that requires maniacal and compulsive perfectionism to get just right — and takes a lifetime to master. Uh huh. Guilty as charged.