Chess Cookies

Ingredients

Flour 300 g

Baking powder 1/2 tsp

Salt 1/2 tsp

Butter 225 g

Sugar 190 g

Egg 1

Cocoa powder 30 g

Vanilla extract 1/2 tsp

Preheat oven to 180-200°C. Sift together the dry ingredients: flour, salt, and baking powder. Beat the softened butter thoroughly with the sugar/powdered sugar using a mixer.

Add the egg. Beat well again. Pour in the dry ingredients and mix well. Divide the dough into two equal parts. Stir in the cocoa powder into one. Add a little flour if necessary. Divide each part in half again.

 

Roll out each of the four pieces (or flatten it with your hands), wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate. An hour should be enough, two is better. Take one white piece and roll it out into a rectangle. The dough should be 1 cm thick, the narrow side 10 cm, and the wide side as thick as you can get. You can vary the thickness. The idea is to then cut out nine square strips of dough. That is, the narrow side is nine times the thickness of the dough, plus one more for trimmings. Refrigerate again to cool. This isn't necessary, but the more you chill the dough in the intermediate stages, the smoother the pattern will be. Do the same with one piece of chocolate dough.



Cut nine 1 cm-wide strips from one light and one dark piece.



Carefully fold them into two bars of nine strips, staggering the strips. You will get two variants of the drawing. Wrap the bars in plastic wrap and carefully compact them (to make them smoother and \

Take one of the remaining pieces of dough. For example, the lighter one. Roll it out so that it's slightly larger in width and length than we made before. You can use any thickness you like. The main thing is that the dough is rolled out evenly. It's best to roll it out on baking paper or cling film, as this will make it easier to wrap later. Take the block with the darker dough out of the refrigerator. Using baking paper or plastic wrap, carefully wrap it in the lighter layer. The key is to take your time, as the dough will break. Trim and seal where necessary. Carefully straighten the sides, making the corners as straight as possible. Wrap in plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator.

Do the same with the darker dough and the second block. Wrap in plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator. You can also freeze it and store until months, and when needed, take them out, slice them, and quickly bake them.

Cut the cookie block into equal-thickness squares, 7-10 mm thick. At this stage, the better you cool them, the smoother the pattern will be.

Bake at 180°C for about 15 minutes (depending on the thickness of the cookies and the oven conditions). Check until they are lightly browned.

Let the cookies cool.

Enjoy!