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!
11 Comments
Hey Cat … forget precise, those cookies look good!!! … no one will ever know they didn’t come out looking exactly as you expected … it looks like it has the letter “C” in the middle … C for Cat, right??? …
… now if you can only figure out how to get it to spell CAT … that would be amazing!!! …
Actually, we thought it looked like a fishhook!
CAT: Too much work for me, will swap my ice box for cuukies!
LOL! Yes, it was a lot of work. But I had my mom helping, so that helped!
That’s OK if they are not as precise as you wanted. They look homemade and homemade yummies are the bestest.
Yeeeeeeaaaaah, but you should see the cookies others were sending. Pretty amazing.
Cat! I’m an eater and not a patient baker but this looks great. Have a great weekend !
Thanks for stopping by! I had a friend who’d always tell me, “Don’t give me the recipe. Just give me the final product!”
I just made the dough, instead of chocolate and vanilla, I tinted them red and green, they are exra work, but they taste great
Such an over-achiever! I love it!
these look great. I’ve been meaning to make pinwheel cookies and now I am inspired to actually do it!