If you love cinnamon swirl pastries, you'll love these easy cinnamon swirl cookies! Perfect for a morning snack or an afternoon pick-me-up, these little beauties are delicious, buttery and soft with the delicate taste of cinnamon.
In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the sugar and butter together until pale and fluffy.
Add the egg and vanilla and mix well.
Add the flour and mix until just combined. Place the cookie dough in the fridge for 30 minutes to chill.
While the dough is chilling, you can make the cinnamon swirl mixture. In a bowl over a saucepan of hot water, melt the unsalted butter and add the light brown sugar, cinnamon and mixed spice. It should look a bit like wet sand, the kind that is really good for building sandcastles!
When the dough has chilled, remove from the fridge and roll into a rectangle approximately 16 inches by 10 inches. It doesn't matter if it's not exactly this size, just the more rectangular the better.
Using a palette knife, spread the cinnamon mixture all over the rectangle of cookie dough, making sure you cover it right to the edges.
Turn the rectangle so that one of the longer sides is facing you, and then roll the dough into a tight roll away from you. Wrap the cinnamon swirl/dough sausage and place in the fridge for 30 minutes.
After 20 minutes, preheat your oven to 175º C.
Remove the dough from the fridge and slice into 16 equal pieces. I find the best way to do this is to slice the sausage in half, then to slice each of those halves in half, and then slice each quarter in half and so on until I've got the right number of pieces.
Place the swirls on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, or until golden brown.