New York · Dessert
Black and White Cookies
- Intermediate
- 70 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, leaving a faint perfume.
Ingredients
- 250g flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 115g butter, softened
- 200g sugar
- 1 egg
- 120ml buttermilk
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1/2 tsp lemon extract
- For the icing: 400g icing sugar, 60ml hot water, 1 tbsp corn syrup, 60g cocoa powder
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Creaming butter & sugarIcing & frosting
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cream butter and sugar, beat in the egg, vanilla, and lemon extract.
- Alternate the dry ingredients with the buttermilk to make a thick batter.
- Scoop large mounds well apart onto lined trays and bake at 190C for 15-17 min until set but pale. Cool completely, flat side up. 17 min
- Whisk icing sugar, hot water, and corn syrup to a thick fondant. Ice half of each cookie white.
- Beat the cocoa into the remaining icing with a splash more hot water and ice the other half, keeping the line clean.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Icing & frosting 17 recipes
- The temperatures were chosen, not defaulted: the bake fully cool where the finish is meant to sit on top of it, or both deliberately warm where the method wants the two to fuse, and the proof either way is a finish that stayed where it was put.
- Smooth on the tongue: no grit of undissolved sugar and no lumps of anything that was never fully worked in.
- The consistency matches the job: it spreads or pours the way the method intends, then holds the edge, swirl, or drip it was given.
- The surface underneath is intact: covered rather than scrubbed, with no crumbs dragged through the finish and no torn patches showing.
- By serving it has settled into the finish the method wants (matte, glossy, or soft) and a cut comes away clean rather than pulling the top off with it.
Where it goes wrong A finish meant to sit on top went on while the bake was still warm. The layer that touched first melted, slid, and soaked in; what is left sets greasy and streaked, and no amount of chilling afterwards puts that finish back.
Creaming butter & sugar 28 recipes
- The butter started at the right temperature: it took a fingerprint and held its shape, neither greasy and slumping nor hard from the fridge.
- It has visibly paled, from yellow towards near-white, and grown in volume, and getting there took minutes rather than seconds.
- The texture is light and aerated: a spoonful is fluffy and holds a soft peak rather than sitting dense on the spoon.
- Rubbed between finger and thumb it is still faintly gritty with undissolved sugar, and not slick or oily.
- It is one homogeneous cream: not split, slackened, or separating into a greasy mass with liquid running out of it.
Where it goes wrong The butter was too warm, or it was beaten well past its point, so the fat softened and gave up the air it had taken: the mixture goes slack and oily and the cake bakes dense and greasy with a sunken middle.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Banyuls or Ruby Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry
- From the Taps
- Imperial stout
- Zero-Proof
- Espresso
Chocolate wants fortified sweetness or roast-bitter contrast: the wine must out-sweet the plate, or oppose it entirely.
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