My kind of black and white cookie

Black and white cookies

I have never been to New York and have never tasted one of the city’s famous black and white cookies.

But as some-one who bakes, I have always been intrigued by these cookies ever since I saw them on an episode of Seinfeld. Don’t you just love this quote?

“I love the black and white. Two races of flavor living side by side in harmony. It’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it?If people would only look to the cookie. All our problems would be solved.”

Luckily we live in the Internet age, and though I cannot taste a bona-fide black and white cookies from a real New York bakery, I can always look for a recipe online and bake them myself. Right!…?

Hmmmm, not really.

I knew that my family would not like the white covering, so I did not even try and cover my cookies with that. The chocolate part they would love, but I could never get it to harden properly. My cookies were dripping chocolate all over the place.

Still, I was not ready to give up on the idea of black and white cookie. If I cannot have black and white frosting, maybe I will just use black and white dough?

And so my black and white cookies came into being. My family loves the unique patterns of each cookie and my daughters often help me to make them.

Recipe for black and white cookies

Ingredients

100 gram of soft butter
1 cup of white sugar
2 beaten eggs
2 cups of flour (if your dough is too soft and sticky add more flour until it is more pliable)
1 tablespoon of baking powder
quarter cup of quality cocoa powder

Method
1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (356 Fahrenheit) and cover your baking trays with baking sheets.
2. Mix the butter and sugar well together and then add the eggs and also mix thoroughly.
3. Add the baking powder and flour and mix until you get a soft, yet pliable dough. You can make the dough in a mixer, but I prefer to get my hands dirty and like to play with the dough. Add more flour if the dough is too sticky.
4. Divide the dough into 2 parts and add the cocoa powder to one of them. Mix the cocoa powder properly into the dough until you do not see any more white bits. Wash your hands from the cocoa powder if needed, to prevent the white dough from becoming chocolaty.
5. Now divide the white dough into three parts and the black dough into three parts.
6. Roll one of the white doughs into a long snake-like shape and roll one of the black doughs into a long snake-like shape and place them flush next to each other.
7. Use a sharp knife and cut the ‘double-dough snake’ together into 2-3cm pieces. If you want a larger cookie, simply cut the double-dough snake into larger pieces.
8. Take one of the cut pieces (with a piece of white And black dough) and roll into a little ball and then flatten it between your hands into a cookie shape.
The white and black dough pieces mix together to make the most wonderful shapes.
9. Place on your baking trays and bake in the oven until the white part of the cookie is golden brown. (About 10 minutes)
10. Continue with the rest of the dough.

I think Seinfeld would have approved, no?