Be careful when reading this very simple recipe… once made, Chessboard biscuits are truly a sweet sentence:-)
They will ask for them in industrial quantities and they will never be enough: and above all, you too will not be able to do without them. They are literally addictive. So you still have time: DON’T MAKE THEM!:-D
Now that you are aware of what it means and entails for future Christmases, here is what you need…
Ingredients:
- 375 g of 00 flour
- 70 g of potato starch
- 125 g of icing sugar
- 250 g of soft butter
- 15-20 g of bitter cocoa
- 1 pinch of salt
In a large bowl, mix the butter cut into pieces with the icing sugar until you create a soft cream. Then add the sifted flour and starch a little at a time, mixing with your hands. You will obtain a soft and elastic mixture that must not “stick”: if necessary, add a little more flour.
Divide the dough in two: wrap one half in cling film and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Add the sifted bitter cocoa to the other half, working it with your hands until it is completely absorbed and you obtain a homogeneous cocoa-colored dough (add more cocoa until you get the shade of brown you prefer). Cover with cling film and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Take the doughs and work them quickly on the surface: start with the white dough (so as not to dirty the work surface) and roll it out to form very long strips with a thickness of 2.5 cm. With a small knife, cut to obtain parallelepipeds 2.5 cm x 2.5 cm and cut them lengthwise at regular intervals (such as every 20 cm) and set them aside. Do the same with the cocoa dough.
If you are not patient, form sausages of the same size with the two doughs (diameter 2.5 cm) and cut them at regular intervals every 20 cm.
ASSEMBLY:
Take 2 strips of the white dough and the cocoa dough. Place a white strip next to a black strip and brush the strips with water. Make them stick well.
Repeat the operation with two more strips and, after brushing them with water, place them on top of the first two to form a larger parallelepiped, taking care to alternate the strips so as to obtain a chessboard.
Close the resulting parallelepiped in the aluminum foil and beat the sides with the blade of a large knife, so as to make the parallelepiped as square as possible.
Place in the freezer for 30 minutes (until it becomes hard). Once out of the freezer, use a small knife to cut regular slices of the parallelepiped about 1 cm high.
Place them on a baking tray lined with paper and bake in a hot oven (180°C) for 12-15 minutes. They must be just cooked and not brown. Take them out and let them cool.
They are also very beautiful to look at and delicious to dip in eggnog: truly exceptional.
P.S. With the small leftovers of the two doughs that come out when you create the strips you can make black and white biscuits
