NYC-Style Black & White Cookies

Wel­come to Choco­late Week. Phew. We made it. After writ­ing a blog about heathy food 51 weeks a year, arriv­ing at the one week in the cal­en­dar when we really let our hair down is a real treat. It can be hard to decide what to make though. There’s so many choco­latey things I want to cre­ate (greet­ings, choco­late peanut but­ter pie) but I decided I needed to pick the one thing I would like to eat regularly–not some over-the-top, only on a spe­cial occa­sion con­fec­tion. So I landed on my all-time favourite cookie: the Black and White. Now, if you read SPC often, you know I’m from the States and I spent many years liv­ing in New York City. Plus both my par­ents were raised in New York so I was basi­cally expected to eat over­sized street pret­zels with course salt as an infant. But the black and white cookie is sort of a food insti­tu­tion for me–it’s right up there with a Gray’s Papaya hot dog.

I never return to NYC and not get a black and white cookie–That would be like vis­it­ing home and for­get­ting to kiss my mother. But it’s also no chore to find them since they’re lit­er­ally on every street cor­ner. As the unof­fi­cial cookie of New York City, they live in the zil­lion of deli’s that spot every avenue and street, not some trendy, hole-in-the-wall bak­ery with a line out the back serv­ing the con­fec­tion of the moment.  If you’ve never had one, then don’t let me fool you into think­ing they’re a cookie. Con­trary to its name, the black and white cookie is made from what is basi­cally a cake bat­ter that yields a supremely soft and moist cake but has the bak­ing chops to be han­dled like a cookie. Oh, and did I men­tion, it’s the size of a cof­fee saucer?

Like the top wafer of an oreo begs to be unscrewed from its cen­tre so you can scrape away the sweet mid­dle, there is def­i­nitely a right way to eat a black and white cookie. Frosted in vanilla icing on one side and choco­late on the other, you must snap the treat in half, right down the cen­tre where the two icings meet. Then you start by eat­ing your least favourite side. In my case, the vanilla glazed goes down first. Oh! The icing! Good­ness, how do I not speak of the icing?! I know when I say cake, you say frost­ing but it really is more a glaze–although the choco­late side has a rich, fudgi­ness that doesn’t jive with the def­i­n­i­tion of a glaze. In other words, the black and white is cookie nir­vana. And you thought NYC was all about some fussy cronut!

In prepa­ra­tion to mak­ing these gor­geous lit­tle gems, I researched  dozens of recipes for a black and white cookie. All of them were essen­tially the exact same recipe, so there’s clearly a strict for­mula to recre­at­ing these babies. As a result, I decided to not try my own ver­sion. I just picked a recipe from a trusted bak­ing site, Joy of Bak­ing. I have to admit I was a bit ner­vous mak­ing some­thing I hold so dear. What if it tasted noth­ing like my beloved corner-store sta­ple? Worse. What if it tasted like sawdust?

But they didn’t. In fact, they tasted damn close to the orig­i­nal. But get­ting my recipe to look and taste the same wasn’t the his­tory mak­ing moment for me. It was the tweet. When I took to Twit­ter to proudly share my bak­ing and dec­o­rat­ing accom­plish­ment (you need time and patience to get that glaze on both sides), I was blown away by one response. Here, see for yourself.

Yup, that’s right. The other NYC insti­tu­tion know as Dean @ Deluca, the gourmet gro­cer whose flag­ship in Soho was a reg­u­lar haunt of mine, thought my cook­ies looked good. Sorry, I just need to repeat that. Dean and Deluca liked the looks of my cookies!

So you need to do a few things here. If you like black and white cook­ies just as much as I do, give these a try. I promise they won’t dis­ap­point. If you’ve never had a black and white cookie, you have to try them. Besides, they’re way cheaper than a trip to the Big Apple. (Although I highly rec­om­mend that too.) And, finally, if you want to taste the real deal, you can always order Dean and Deluca’s ver­sion here. Maybe I will too. After hav­ing my lit­tle Twit­ter chat, I’m feel­ing a bit nos­tal­gic for some old friends.