Black & Whites

I don't remember when I tried my first Black and White cookie, but I know that they now rank solidly in my top five all-time favorite cookies. All-time is big. It's like making it to the top 10 on American Idol or to the all-star team of whatever sport you're good at.

Black & White cookies can be found in almost every bodega and bakery in the city. The commercially made versions are tightly wrapped in cellophane and slightly smaller than the size of a salad plate. I'm not exaggerating when I say they are huge. These cookies are perfect for sharing because they are so big you would feel like a glutton if you ate a whole one. And you'd be on a sugar high for days. Store bought Black & Whites are iced with a layer of smooth white icing on one half and chocolate fondant on the opposite side. Which side to eat first if a hotly debated topic. My advice is to go with your gut instinct and you can't go wrong.

I found this recipe in one of my go-to cookie books, Got Milk? The Cookie Book by Peggy Cullen. I think it's a winner. Try making mini Black & Whites by simply reducing the amount of batter you spoon onto the baking sheets. You'll have more to ice, but the small cookies will look great if you're making a variety of cookies for a dessert platter.

This cookie requires a trip to the store to pick up a few things you probably don't have in your pantry.

1. Parchment Paper (a must here to keep the cookies from spreading too much or sticking to the baking sheets).

2. Cake flour (usually comes in a box). Do not buy self-rising cake flour.

3. Whole milk and bittersweet chocolate. I used a bar of Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate.

Ready, set, bake!

Black & Whites

1 stick softened, unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 large egg yolks, room temperature
1 teaspoon milk
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Icing

2 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2 3/4 cups confectioners' sugar
5 tablespoons boiling water
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, sift the cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt. Whisk to combine. Set aside.

In a mixer fitted with paddle attachment or in a medium bowl with a hand-held mixer, beat butter, sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Scrape bowl using a rubber spatula. Beat in the eggs and egg yolks one at a time. Scrape down the sides of the bowl again with spatula. Add the milk.

On low speed, add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with spatula and mix again for just a few seconds.

Scoop the batter onto prepared baking sheets using an ice cream scoop, leveling it off across the top before dropping onto sheets about 2 1/2 inches apart. Do not crowd the mounds of batter on the sheets. Bake one tray at a time for 15 minutes, or until the centers spring back lightly when touched. Do not allow cookies to brown.

Let sit for five minutes and then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Do not overbake.

Icing Instructions

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in the microware, being careful not to burn or allow any water to come in contact with the chocolate or it will seize.

In a medium bowl, use a whisk to combine confectioners' sugar and boiling water. Add the vanilla. The consistency should be slightly runny, but thick enough to spread. Add more water to thin if necessary or more sugar to thicken it. Using an offset spatula or butter knife, spread half of the flat side of each cookie with icing.

When all cookies are iced with white frosting, add melted chocolate to the remaining icing and thin with additional hot water if necessary (it's okay to add hot water to chocolate). Spread chocolate icing on remaining half of each cookie. You may need to add hot water a few times to keep chocolate icing from becoming to thick.

The cookies are best the day they are made. You can store them un-iced, refrigerated in an airtight container overnight, or freeze them for up to two weeks before icing.

Easter Cutouts

Easter was only a few days ago and my blood sugar levels are returning to normal after gorging on peeps, jelly beans, chocolate cream pie, and sugar cutout cookies of bunnies, chicks, and bugs. Yes, bugs.

I confess that I didn't actually bake any cookies this week so I'm resorting to a little help from my sister-in-law who is a fan of the blog (Hi Tammy!) and who has made many of the cookies found here. Tammy arrived on Easter Sunday with a gorgeous array of cutout cookies iced with a wonderful looking sparkly icing in supercharged colors. After a few questions I found out that the cookie cutouts are from Martha Stewart's bug collection and the icing is sparkle gel from Wilton and comes in tubes.


















I love the look of the brightly colored chicks, carrots, dragonflys and ladybugs. The cookie recipe is from Martha Stewart which always makes a deliciously buttery cookie.

As long as I'm sharing, here are the other dessert choices from Easter Sunday. My mom makes the best, tastiest pies on the face of the earth and we always have at least two to choose from. This year she made three amazing works of art.

Chocolate Cream Pie






Key Lime Pie





Lemon Meringue

St. Patrick's Day Cutouts

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day! The day the Irish and the pseudo Irish watch a parade and then hit the bars. I suspect there will be many people calling in sick on Thursday.

Over the weekend I made these cutout cookies to celebrate. I'm bringing them into work tomorrow and sharing with my co-workers. We've all be working hard lately and they deserve a little treat.

The cookie is a basic sugar cookie with royal icing. Click here for the previously posted recipes from the Penguin cookies I made a few months ago.

I unscrewed the green cap from the food coloring and put a drop into the mixing bowl only to find out the container was mislabeled and I had just made light blue icing! Luckily, I remembered that blue and yellow make green. With a few drops of yellow and a splash of creme de menthe, I remedied the situation and had a nice light green icing. Whew! That was close. My co-workers will never know that I almost gave them blue shamrocks.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Ginger Creams

Icing is the one of the best things ever invented. I think I would even eat lima beans if they were covered with a buttery, sweet, layer of icing. Most of the iced cookies I usually make are basic sugar cutout cookies with a simple icing made with softened butter, confectioners sugar, and milk. When I found a recipe for Ginger Creams in Betty Crocker's Cookie Jar Cookbook, I knew I had to try them.

A side note: my friend and former co-worker Tracey once nicknamed me Tommy Crocker which still makes me smile some fifteen years later when I think about it.

The recipe is quite easy to prepare and is the first cookie recipe I recall that includes water. The only molasses I could find in the store was extra dark. This worked fine, however, if you want the cookie to be lighter brown then use regular molasses. I found the most difficult part of making Ginger Creams to be spooning the dough onto the cookie sheets. The dough was very soft even after being refrigerated for one hour. I recommend refrigerating an hour longer or overnight if you have the time.

Ginger Creams

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup molasses (I used extra dark molasses, but regular will work fine)

1/2 cup water

1/3 cup shortening

1 egg

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 t ground ginger

1/2 t salt

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t ground nutmeg

1/2 t ground cloves

1/2 t ground cinnamon

Combine sugar, molasses, water, shortening and egg in a mixing bowl. Beat until combined. Stir in remaining ingredients. Dough will be very moist and sticky. Cover and refrigerate at least one hour.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Drop dough, by teaspoonfuls, about 2 inches apart onto an ungreased cook sheet. Bake 8 minutes until no indentation remains when touched lightly. Remove immediately from cookie sheet; cool. Frost with vanilla icing (below).

Vanilla Frosting

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 t vanilla

2 T milk

Mix powdered sugar and butter. Stir in vanilla and milk; beat until smooth and spreadable. If icing is too think, add milk, 1 teaspoon at a time.

Cookie Press Review:

Just one bite of this cookie and I was hooked. The cookie itself is gingerbread-like. The spices are bold, but not overpowering and the icing is the perfect complement to the cakey cookie. Great alone, with a glass of milk, or with a cup of hot tea, these cookies satisfy.

Cookie press rating: four cookies (out of five)

March of the Penguins

Martha Stewart and I go way back. I send her money and she sends me magazines. It's a dysfunctional relationship that makes me feel totally inadequate. Martha's homes are beautifully decorated and she never burns anything except maybe trimmings from her garden. In short, Martha's perfect. That's why when I received my subscription renewal gift I was pleasantly surprised (and secretly vindicated) when Martha had screwed up. I was supposed to receive a snowflake cookie cutter which would enable me to create fabulous snowflake cookies each delicately and painstakingly iced and decorated. Instead I received a penguin cookie cutter with instructions on how to make penguin cookies. As I about to toss the box in the trash, I noticed a sticker on the side with an apology note stating that the snowflake cookie cutter was no longer available. Damn, she even had the forethought to apologize for running out of a free gift. She is perfect after all.

I looked at the tiny picture of the decorated penguin cookies and thought, "hey, I can do this." The sugar cookie recipe is pretty basic and easy to make. The key is in the decoration.

Sugar Cookies
4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 t salt
1 t baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 t vanilla extract

Sift flour, salt, and baking powder together in a bowl. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes). Beat in the eggs and vanilla.

Add flour mixture, mix on low until thoroughly combined. Wrap dough in plastic wrap, separating into two equal size pieces and chill for at least 30 minutes.

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Roll dough on lightly floured surface to thickness of 1/8th inch. Using cookie cutter, cut into desired shapes. Transfer to ungreased baking sheets, refrigerate until firm, 15 minutes. Bake 8 to 10 minutes until edges brown slightly. Cool on wire racks. Decorate as desired.

Royal Icing
2 large egg whites
1 pound confectioners' sugar
food coloring and/or sanding sugar

Beat egg whites, sugar, and 2 t water on low speed for 10 minutes. For thicker icing continue to beat 2 or 3 minutes more. Transfer to smaller bowls and add food coloring as desired. If icing is too thick, add a drop or two of water to thin.

I decided to stick with standard penguin colors, black and white. I saw March of the Penguins and know they live a difficult life. Decorating them in bright colors just didn't seem right. I cheated a bit and bought a tube of black icing for creating the penguin eyes.

I filled a plastic sandwich bag with icing and cut a tiny hole in one corner of the bag. Voila, an instant disposable pastry icing bag. The royal icing piped on nicely and didn't run all over the place. I had gotten the thickness just right. I sprinkled some with black sanding sugar, some with white sanding sugar and some I just iced the whole cookie white. I then started to get creative by adding a bow tie, tuxedo buttons, and small flippers to complete the cookies. I propped them up using an empty egg carton flipped over and dusted with confectioners' sugar.

My cookies only vaguely resembled Martha's professionally decorated and photographed cookies but I didn't care. These were my own interpretation and I think they turned out rather well.