Zebra Cookies | Buttermilk by Sam (2024)

Okay, aren’t these cookies gorgeous?! I’ve been wanting to do a cookie like this forever and have been fiddling it with the recipe here and there for two years, but not getting it quite right until now.

But before we begin, I want to get one thing off my chest, I just know my directions are going to suck. I’m so sorry. I’ll try my best to convey the instructions as clearly and simply as possible but I have very little faith and I beg you to watch the video because it’ll be better to see it in action.

The general idea is this: make a sugar cookie dough. Split it in half. Make one vanilla and one chocolate (black). Then roll them out and stack them. Repeat and repeat. You’re going for a long rectangular cuboid (yes, I had to look that up).

The layering is a lot like laminating, there’s just no butter. But you’ll be layering and rolling a few times to get many little lines. You can always do less than I’ve done but the more you do the prettier the result.

Recipe Ingredients

Butter: Don’t use european butter here, or if you do add a bit more flour – like another tablespoon less the dough become too soft to work with.

Powdered sugar: I use organic powdered sugar, made with tapioca starch. If you use the regular kind you’ll probably have a softer dough (it’s finer).

Black cocoa: You might be tempted to use a dutch cocoa here, I have tried it and it was markedly different. Black cocoa has a distinct taste, definitely more smoky than chocolaty, but the brown of dutch didn’t yield as pretty of a design. The stark of black against white was best.

Flour: all purpose flour. I use KAF which has an 11.7% protein content.

Salt: fine sea salt. If using table salt, halve the amount.

Vanilla: pure vanilla extract – the good stuff! It’s the main flavor in the vanilla dough.

How to make Zebra Cookies: two ways

There’s the striped version which you see in the first photos on this page, this requires stacking, rolling and then stacking a few times to create the many thin layers (this method is in the video above the recipe card). The second method, a spiral design, you’ll see step by step photos of here: you’ll do just a bit of stacking but then roll up the dough into a log (like a cinnamon roll).

Once you’ve made the dough, divide it in half (I use a scale to weigh the dough then divide it).

Put one of the halves back in the mixer and add the flour, then turn the mixer on to combine (we’re doing the vanilla first so we don’t get black cocoa on the vanilla dough). Wrap that half in cling wrap.

Then put the other half in the mixer and add the black cocoa, mix until combined then wrap that half. Let the doughs chill for 30 minutes or up to an hour.

Roll out one of the doughs to a large rectangle that’s about 13 x 9 inches.

Roll out the other dough to the same size.

Stack the two doughs on top of each other – I tend to brush them with water. then roll them out further to ensure they’ll stick together.

Slice the dough in half and stack them. Then brush with water again and roll the doughs out again to a 13 x 9″

Roll the dough up into a log, as tight as you can so you don’t get holes in the cookies.

Then wrap in plastic wrap. If you like you can leave it round or you can straighten out the sides (I do this by pressing down on four sides of the dough with a chopping board) to make a cuboid.

Let it chill for about an hour, until firm then use a chef’s knife to slice the dough into cookies that are about 1 cm thick.

Tips

• If you use a lot of flour the layers will refuse to stick together. Your rolling pin works to get the layers to stick together but it might not be successful, brush a very thin layer of water to get them to stick.
• If the dough can be sticky, use flour only as needed (just not too much, see above).
• This recipe won’t make many cookies, 12 max I think, but they are darn pretty.
• You will taste the black cocoa. It’ll be the first thing that jumps out at you when you bite in.
• These cookies last for 2 weeks at room temperature, like shortbread!

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