Black and White Cookies

When I was a Senior in college, my Jewish roommate wanted a Chanumas tree. My other roommate and I obliged, and hilarity ensued--involving two fake mini-lawn trees (the kind with pointy plastic trunks intended to be skewered into the dirt) skewered instead into a printer paper box, blue and white lights, YouDee dolls, mini bacteria stuffed toys, and bar crawl wrist bands....

So when I visited aforementioned Jewish college roommate recently in upstate NY where she's now a grad student, it seemed only fitting that the Chanumas/Chrismukkah theme came up again in our exploits. Namely, these black and white cookies she's been making for many years now, the recipe for which comes out of a festive and cheeky Chrismukkah cookbook.

More cake than cookie, this New York-associated confection is somehow ubiquitously familiar, yet no two recipes are seem even remotely similar to each other in their components or ratios....I've seen recipes with milk, some with sour cream, some with buttermilk....but in any case, this recipe was so delicious, I immediately asked for a copy to take home with me.

The recipe supposedly makes eight cookies....yeah, eight cookies the SIZE OF MY FACE. So when I made this for an event, I doubled the recipe and halved the cookie size, aiming for a grand total of about 32 cookies. I came pretty close and ended up with about 30.




Black and White Diversity Cookies (adapted from Chrismukkah: The Merry Mish-mash Holiday Cookbook)

Ingredients:

1 & 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg

1 & 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
2 teaspoons lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
several tablespoons water
1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

In one bowl, combine flour, salt, and baking soda and mix to combine. With a mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until well blended. Add the egg, sour cream, and vanilla and mix until smooth. Add the dry ingredients and mix on low until just combined. The consistency of the batter should be that of very thick pudding.

Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone baking mats or greased foil. Drop the dough by 1/4 cupfuls (for big cookies), or 1/8 cupfuls (about 2 tablespoons, for more reasonable cookies). Bake until lightly browned--15-17 minutes for big cookies, 12-13 minutes for smaller cookies. Cool cookies on a rack.

For the white icing, combine powdered sugar, corn syrup, lemon zest, and vanilla in a small bowl and add water a tablespoon at a time while stirring until desired consistency. Should be thin enough to spread easily but thick enough that it won't dribble everywhere. Frost half of each cookie with vanilla frosting. With the remaining frosting, add the specified amount of cocoa and just enough water to again reach spreadable but non-drippy consistency. Frost the 2nd half of each cookie with the chocolate icing. Let the cookies rest until icing is set, about 1 hour.

Store cookies in an airtight container between sheets of waxed or parchment paper. Makes 8 large cookies or 16 smaller cookies.




The cake is moist and soft, yet sturdy, and absolutely addicting with the vanilla and chocolate icing that has a breath of freshness in it with the lemon zest.

A little time intensive, but definitely worth the work. Here are a couple other notable black and white cookie recipes from blogs I read, for variety:

Cookie Madness
Smitten Kitchen
Joy the Baker (in red velvet, ooh la la)
Nosh With Me

You'll see what I mean about how different these recipes are for the same cookie....

But they're delicious no matter how you make them!