I made Claire Saffitz's Pistachio Pinwheels from Dessert Person as part of my holiday cookie assortment. I think a pinwheel cookie always looks festive, and because the pistachio spiral is green hued, it seemed particularly fitting for Christmas. Plus, slice-and-bake cookies are always convenient when you have a busy baking schedule since you can make and shape the dough ahead of time and just keep it in the fridge until you're ready to bake.
I really like the fact that these cookies aren't vanilla dough spiraled with pistachio dough, but almond dough spiraled with pistachio dough. You make the base dough in the food processor by mixing room temperature butter with powdered sugar; adding yolks and almond extract; and pulsing in flour and salt. You remove two-thirds of the dough from the processor, mix in almond flour, roll it out between two pieces of parchment, and put it in the fridge until firm. Meanwhile, you take the remaining dough from the food processor and mix in ground pistachios to form what will become the pistachio portion of the spiral. My pistachios were not blanched (I'm not aware of any convenient source for blanched pistachios, and I am far too lazy to blanch them myself), so my pistachio dough was not bright green, but greenish-brown instead. And while I'm referring to it as "dough" (as does the cookbook), it was really more like a pistachio spread.
I spread the pistachio dough on top of the chilled almond dough slab. The pistachio layer was so thin that I was really worried it might not be visible at all in the finished cookie. But I rolled up the dough into a log and chilled it for a day. When I was ready to bake, I took the log of dough out of the fridge, rolled it in demerara sugar, and sliced it into individual cookies.
Claire's cookies made with blanched pistachios are such a beautiful vibrant shade of green that I might have to try this recipe again with blanched nuts. But even with my muddy green spirals, these cookies were fantastic.
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