Black and White Spiral Cookies

Name: Black and White Spiral Cookies
Yield: Makes about 80 cookies
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 1 large, egg; 10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks), unsalted butter, softened; 1/4 teaspoon, table salt; 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon, granulated sugar (2 3/4 ounces; 78 grams); 1 teaspoon, vanilla extract; 1 1/2 cups, unbleached all-purpose flour (7 1/2 ounces; 213 grams); 1 large, egg; 10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks), unsalted butter, softened; 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon, granulated sugar (2 3/4 ounces; 78 grams); 1/4 teaspoon, table salt; 1 teaspoon, vanilla extract; 1 1/3 cups, unbleached all-purpose flour (6 2/3 ounces; 189 grams); 1/4 cup, Dutch-processed cocoa (1 ounce; 28 grams)

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Appears in Cook's Illustrated November/December 2008

Desserts or Baked Goods

These French butter cookies offer sophistication and style from simple pantry ingredients. That is, if you can capture their elusive sandy texture.

SERVESMakes about 80 cookies

TIME2 hours, plus 1¼ hours chilling and 20 minutes cooling

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WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS

It took some detective work to develop a French butter cookie recipe with a properly sandy texture. Cutting back on the butter in our sable recipe helped, but the breakthrough was using a traditional French ingredient—hard-cooked egg yolk—w...

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