Black & White Cookies

My good friend TLC moved from New York to California over a year ago and suffers from chronic homesickness.  I miss her and wanted to bribe her back home with something iconic New York.  Neither cookie nor cake, it lies somewhere in between the two and is characterized by both a slight dome shape to its underside as well as the yin-yang icing.  My ideal black & white is moist, slightly spongy (almost like a madeleine), and its icings are shiny and rich in flavor.  So I set out to make the best black & white ever.  I made roughly 12 dozen of these things over the course of a few months.  And though he wasn’t the intended recipient, the last test batch went to my favorite professor on the last day of class.  He hasn’t commented on whether he liked them but I did get an A- in his class.

Bribery–it’s how I roll.

My biggest challenge wasn’t the cookie itself; that was the easy part.  The batter should be thick, almost like waffle batter, and maintain most of its shape when dropped onto the baking sheet:

It was the icing that had me utterly and completely stumped.  First I focused on the white part.  Fondant-based icing is sometimes used to produce that smooth look, and it’s true, it does look very pretty.  Too bad it’s chewy and gummy and comes off in sheets.  Am I the only person who thinks there’s something very wrong with icing that can be peeled off the cookie like a banana skin?   I mean, the only upside to this is that you can just peel off the fondant-y grossness and throw it away.   Because this is my column and I hate fondant on principle, I immediately rejected it out of hand in my black & white odyssey, sort of the way I reject bad dates.

Look, Ma! No clothes!

Which left confectioners’ sugar-based icing.  How difficult could it be?  It turned out to be a wee bit harder than I expected because the texture needs to be thick enough to cover the cookie properly yet loose enough to avoid ripping the cookie as you frost it as well as dry to a satisfying crunch without crumbling to bits.  One recipe I consulted recommended using boiling water to mix into the powdered sugar, while another suggested milk.  Both directed me to use vanilla extract as flavoring, which I wanted to keep.  I tried both recipes and was left wanting.  Something about the flavor was off, and I thought maybe my sugar wasn’t fresh (an unlikely issue in a baker’s kitchen but I was willing to consider the possibility).  So I bought more confectioners’ sugar and tried again.  Same off-flavor, sort of flat and dull, though I felt the icing made with whole milk tasted much richer and had a more pleasant mouth-feel than the one made with boiling water, which was unpleasant.  Subsequently, the water-based icing joined its foul fondant friend in the reject corner.  Still, the milky icing was missing something.  I thought about the way I liven up the flavor of rice and beans with a splash of red wine vinegar and decided to try a bit of lemon juice in the icing.   Hot damn, it worked!   With both vanilla and lemon in the mix, the white icing tasted warm and bright, like sunshine.  Winner!

With the mystery of the white icing solved, I moved on to its chocolate counterpart.  Because I’m descended from magpies, I wanted this icing to be nice and shiny.  Simply melting some chocolate and slapping it on the cookie (as directed by the same recipe that said to use boiling water in the white icing) didn’t do it for me.  It was stiff, dried to a dull satin finish and was so crunchy, it crumbled off the cookie when I bit into it.  I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a dreadful waste of chocolate.  I tried thinning it with a little butter, but that didn’t work very well and I was concerned that the rich flavor of the butter would overwhelm the chocolate as well as the buttery goodness of the cookie.  I mean, yeah, they’re two of my very favorite ingredients in the world, but still.  Next I tried mixing a teaspoon or two of neutral vegetable oil into the melted chocolate.  This resulted in a marked improvement in glossiness but didn’t do much for the texture, which was still too crunchy for my taste.  Finally, I resorted to heating some heavy cream and adding the chopped dark chocolate to it to make a ganache.  First batch of ganache was too loose and didn’t dry as firmly as I wanted, so I reduced the amount of cream and finished with a pat of cold butter.  It worked beautifully:

Shiny chocolate icing worthy of any self-respecting magpie

The final result: tender, rich disks of happiness that are always dressed for the occasion.  Maybe it’s good enough to bring TLC back to New York City where she and her husband AC belong!

If you look closely, you’ll see little flecks of vanilla bean seeds in the white half

The Blind Baker’s Black & White cookies

1 stick unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs at room temperature
2 large egg yolks at room temperature
1 tsp milk (whole, if possible. Otherwise 2% is fine)
1 cup plus 2 tbs cake flour (NOT self-rising)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Icing:
1/4 cup heavy cream
3 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 pat cold butter
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
3 TBS milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line two baking sheets with a Silpat silicone mat or parchment paper.  Don’t use aluminum foil or grease the pans–it will cause the cookies to spread out too much.
2. Using paddle attachment, beat butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Scrape down the bowl. Beat in the eggs and yolks, one at a time. Scrape down the bowl. Add the milk. In separate bowl, sift cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt. Whisk to combine. On low speed, add the dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Scrap the bowl and mix again for a few seconds.
3. Scoop the batter using a 1” diameter ice-cream scoop, leveling it off across the top before dropping mounds onto the prepared baking sheets about 1 1/2” apart. Bake one tray at a time for about 15 minutes or until the centers spring back when lightly touched. Let it sit for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Do not over-bake.  Let the sheet pans cool completely before using them again.
4. Heat the cream in a small saucepan. When it starts to steam, stir in the chopped chocolate until it’s completely melted. Whisk to blend and allow it to cool.
5. In a medium bowl, use a whisk to combine the confectioner’s sugar and milk. Add vanilla and fresh lemon juice. The consistency should be slightly runny but thick enough to spread.  Add more milk to thin it or more sugar to thicken it.  Using a small icing spatula, spread half of the flat side of each cookie with the white frosting.
6. Smooth the chocolate icing onto the other half of each cookie.   As an alternative for those who don’t want to use heavy cream for the chocolate icing: stir the melted chocolate into the remaining white frosting. If necessary, thin it with more milk (you may need to warm the milk first).
7. If you don’t plan to eat the cookies the day they’re made, store them un-iced, refrigerated in an airtight container overnight, or freeze them for up to two weeks.