These butter cookies are soft, delicious and make a perfect homemade gift! The vanilla and chocolate cookie doughs can be easily made ahead of time and left in the fridge. The real work comes in assembling the cookies together. Make sure your dough is completely chilled before cutting as this not only ensures you have nice clean edges but also makes it easier to move the cut shapes around. If you feel the dough starting to become too sticky to work with at any point, just pop it back in the fridge to chill for another 30 minutes or so. You can also optionally chill the assembled cookies prior to baking – this helps the cookies hold their shape better in the oven and not spread out too much.

This recipe uses chocolate and vanilla to create the two colours but you can also use other flavours or food colouring and mix and match different shapes to create a unique cookie!

Ingredients (makes 18 cookies)

Vanilla Cookie

• 80g butter, softened
• 40g sugar
• 25g egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ¼ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp baking powder
• 100g flour
• 10g corn starch
• 5g milk powder

Chocolate Cookie

• 80g butter, softened
• 40g sugar
• 25g egg
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• ¼ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp baking powder
• 100g flour
• 15g cocoa powder

Directions

1. First make the vanilla cookie dough. Cream the softened butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and egg and continue mixing until well incorporated.
2. In a separate bowl, sift together the salt, baking powder, flour, corn starch and milk powder.
3. Add the dry ingredients into the wet and fold together with a spatula until it comes together into a sticky dough.
4. Roll out the dough into a 6 x 6 inch square, approximately ¼ inch thick. Wrap the square in chill in the fridge for at least an hour or overnight.
5. Repeat the same process for the chocolate cookie dough.
6. Once the dough is chilled and you are ready to assemble the cookies, preheat the oven to 350F.
7. With a knife, gently mark out a 3 x 3 grid on both the chocolate and vanilla doughs. Use a cookie cutter to punch out an animal or other shape of your choice in the center of each grid square and set the inner shape aside.
8. Once the shapes are all punched out, swap the doughs by placing the chocolate shapes inside the vanilla squares and vice versa.
9. Cut along the grid lines marked in step 7 to separate the cookies.
10. Place the cookies on a lined baking sheet and bake at 350F for 20 minutes.