It’s becoming sort of a tradition for me.

Every Christmas for the past three years, I’ve participated in the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, hosted by bloggers (and my Instagram and Twitter pals) Lindsay of Love and Olive Oil and Julie of The Little Kitchen. More than 22,000 cookies were delivered to hungry stomachs all over the country.

The first year I made and mailed kakimochi chocolate chip sweetheart cookies, using a very familiar ingredient — kakimochi, or rice crackers — to folks in Hawaii and Japan. The next year I made local-style thumbprint cookies.

This year, though, I went in a different direction.

These recipes should have a story attached to them. Maybe it’s a family recipe or a memory from childhood. Or maybe they incorporate a local ingredient or hail from your ethnic background.

This recipe — pinwheel ice box cookies — had two stories.

First off, these are cookies associated with my early years browsing bakeries in Hawaii. Just about every one — particularly King’s Bakery in Honolulu — had a version of these cookies. Though King’s Bakery closed up shop on King Street in 1992 and is now based in Torrance, Calif., I still think about its checkerboard chocolate-and-vanilla shortbread bites.

But the real story is this: my grandmother, who was a phenomenal baker from what I hear, had made these cookies once. And they were so good, my dad still talks about them.

Except she only made them once.

I wondered why — until I made them myself.

They’re, well, a bitch to make. (You’ll see in the photo gallery below.) Let’s just say I won’t be making these again anytime soon.

But I did get batches out to my assigned food bloggers: Alison Dulaney, Heart of Gold; Jen Foley (@foleyjennifer), What Jen Does; and Kelly Bonatsakis (@cupcakekellys), Cupcake Kelly’s. Hopefully they liked them as much as I did.

They’re not the prettiest cookies, but they’re adequately tasty. If they weren’t so difficult to make, I’d be baking them every weekend.

The difference this year, though, was that, as part of our participation in the virtual cookie swap, we each donated $4 to Cookies For Kids’ Cancer, a kick-ass charity that raises money for cancer research through cookie sales. OXO, Dixie Crystals, Gold Medal Flour and Grandma Molasses matched the donation dollar for dollar — can you believe that? — and we all raised more than $13,000 for the cause.

Not bad for a bunch of food bloggers, huh?

Well, here’s the recipe!

Get out the ruler

Image 1 of 17

This is where it gets complicated. You have to roll out one of the doughs into a rectangle 6 by 7 inches. The other will be a little smaller, at 6 by 6 inches.