Sugar Cookie Pinwheels - like Origami for Dough

Okay, so pinwheel cookies aren't exactly origami, or would that be ori-cookies?

Either way, I just couldn't resist making them, to celebrate our success with this origami pinwheel from Kathleen Thorne-Thomsen's Frank Lloyd Wright for Kids, His Life and Ideas, 21 Activities.

Either we're getting better at origami, or we're finding easier, and easier projects to attempt.

For those of you who follow along regularly, and might be wondering why we've pulled Frank Lloyd Wright into our origami obsession (really it's more of a mild interest, than an obsession), suffice it to say, we finished listening through Blue Balliett's The Calder Game, and have moved back one book in the series to The Wright 3, which is written around the work of the famous architect.

I was pretty pleased when I discovered two of the 21 activities in Thorne-Thomsen's book, which I brought in from the library to supplement our family reading, explore Wright's love of design, through origami.

As to the cookies:

We took one batch of sugar cookie dough, and divided it in two. I've requested from the author of Alphabake, A Cookbook and Cookie Cutter Set, permission to share the recipe here, but I haven't heard anything back, but any sugar cookie recipe will do.

We added a couple of tablespoons of baker's cocoa to one half of the batch, and rolled both halves out as flat as possible.

Using a wax paper template, we cut 3.5 inch squares from both types of dough...


...stacking them together on a greased cookie sheet (our nod to the two-colored origami paper). You could make this even easier, by using only one type of dough, and sprinkling the top with candy sprinkles, or colored sugar.


We cut in, diagonally, from each corner with a butter knife, stopping about an inch from the center.


Then, we folded in one corner (all rights, or all lefts), from each triangle, to the center...



...holding the dough in place with a chocolate chip...


...and baked them, as usual, at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, for 10 to 12 minutes.


It's great to be a homeschooler.