Because I hate recipe websites that take 15 years to get to the actual recipe, I'm putting it at the top of this description.

Ingredients:

- 100g (3.5 oz) butter
- 100g (3.5 oz) sugar
- 1 egg, beaten
- A dash of vanilla essence
- 200g (7 oz) cake flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 3 teaspoons cocoa powder

Recipe:

- Put the butter in a bowl and let it soften
- Cream the sugar into the butter
- Add the egg and a dash of vanilla essence, mixing well
- Sift the flour in, and add the baking powder. Mix well, forming a dough.
-- If it's too sticky, add more flour
-- If it doesn't form a dough and stays in separate pieces, add some water
-- You want the dough to form a ball on its own and come cleanly off the walls of the bowl
- Divide the dough into two halves, and remove one half from the bowl.
- Add the cocoa powder to the remaining half and mix. If the dough doesn't turn completely brown add a bit more cocoa powder.
- Shape each half into a cuboid as best you can, and wrap each half separately in clingfilm. You can use a cardboard box to help shape it if you want, or just press on the sides with something flat and hard.
- Put them in the freezer until frozen (a few hours should do it)
- Cut each block in half lengthways. Stick each half onto a half-block of the other color. Press together firmly.
- Re-wrap in clingfilm and return to the freezer for about 45 minutes.
- Cut each block in half through both colors of dough. Flip one half over and stick it back together; this gives you the checkerboard effect. Press together firmly.
- Re-wrap in clingfilm and return to the freezer one last time for 45 minutes.
- Preheat your oven to 350F / 175C.
- Prepare two trays by lining them with aluminum foil or baking paper.
- Cut the dough into roughly 5mm thick pieces. Place the cookies on the trays with some space between them (they will expand during cooking).
- Bake until the cookies are just starting to go brown around the edges. (15-20 minutes - keep an eye on them)
- Remove from the oven and allow them to cool.

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Behold, the *checks* 14 and a halfth-year anniversary of the Yoshi Cookie recipe! Wow I'm old On a whim I ended up making these again, and since it's been so long, and I know a bit more about cooking now, I figured I'd try them with a bit more of a streamlined recipe as I expected all the extra steps of adding half a set of ingredients at a time weren't really necessary.

I also decided to just call these Checkerboard Cookies, instead of Icebox Cookies (which is what the Japanese recipe calls them) or Battenburg Cookies (after Battenburg cake). It's more easily recognized.

My only suspicion is that you need more flour than the amount stated above, as I had to add a fair bit to my dough to get it to stop sticking. It's also possible that a wooden spoon wasn't the best choice to mix with, a plastic spoon or a spatula might work better. I may well make these again (not least because I now have a lifetime supply of cake flour) so if I make more discoveries I will update this recipe. I also would recommend making the dough blocks fairly thick, so you end up with bigger cookies than I did - while these came out perfectly fine they are a bit on the small side.

I also submitted it as an image this time because otherwise FA will shrink the picture down to the size of a postage stamp.

I let these cool while I was writing this up, and just tried one. They're pretty tasty. Enjoy!

The recipe is from Nintendo, translated from the Japanese release of Yoshi's Cookie by yours truly.