Peanut Butter Pinwheels

1. Combine powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and softened butter or cream cheese in a bowl to form a soft dough. For every 4 cups of powdered sugar, use approximately 8 tablespoons of butter or 4 ounces of cream cheese. Mix the dough with a hard spoon, with your hands, or with the dough hook attachment of a stand mixer. Every 4 cups of powdered sugar yields two logs of peanut butter pinwheels or one log of multi-colored sugar dough pinwheels.

2. Divide the dough in halves and shape each half into a ball in your hands.

3. Place one dough ball between two layers of wax paper or plastic wrap dusted lightly with powdered sugar to prevent sticking. Roll the dough into a rectangle ¼- to ½-inch thick. Peel back the top piece of wax paper.

4. Spread peanut butter evenly across the entire sugar dough rectangle, making the peanut butter layer roughly equal in thickness to the dough layer.

5. Roll the dough and peanut butter into a log shape from long side to long side, keeping the dough fairly tight but not tight enough to squeeze peanut butter out of the ends. Roll the dough so you end up with a long, fairly narrow log rather than a short, thick log.

6. Wrap the bottom piece of wax paper around the candy log, twisting each end of the paper to secure. Repeat this process with the second reserved sugar dough ball, making two rolled logs wrapped in wax paper.

7. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour to set the sugar dough and firm the peanut butter. Remove from the refrigerator and unwrap the logs.

8. Cut each sugar and peanut butter log into slices 1/2 to 1 1/2 inches thick, depending on your preference. Serve immediately or arrange the pinwheels on a plate and cover with plastic wrap until ready to serve.

Multi-Colored Pinwheels

1. Mix powdered sugar, and softened butter or cream cheese in a bowl to make a sugar dough, using 8 tablespoons of butter or 4 ounces of cream cheese for every 4 cups of powdered sugar. You can make one multi-colored pinwheel log with 4 cups of powdered sugar.

2. Divide the sugar dough in half. Add your choice of flavor extract and food coloring gel to each half of the dough. Knead the dough in your hands to incorporate the flavoring and color. Try tinting one half pastel green and one half pastel pink, flavoring both with mint extract to make large-scale versions of pastel mints. To make orange creamsicle-flavored candy pinwheels, tint one half of the sugar dough orange and add orange flavor extract. Leave the other half of the dough white, but flavor it with vanilla extract. It takes about 1/4 teaspoon of flavor extract for each dough half, but you can add more or less to taste. Roll each dough half into a ball.

3. Place one dough ball between two pieces of wax paper and roll it to make a rectangle ¼- to ½-inch thick. Repeat with the second color, making two separate colored rectangles.

4. Stack the two rectangle pieces of sugar dough together, trimming any excess dough around the edges with a pizza cutter.

5. Roll the two dough rectangles together from long side to long side to form one long log. Wrap the candy log in wax paper and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

6. Remove the two-toned log from the refrigerator and discard the wax paper wrapping. Slice the log into 1/2- to 1 1/2-inch pieces. Keep the pinwheels covered until just before serving.