Black and White Cookies

[abooja]

I dug up this thread while researching black & whites, to prove a point that they, in fact, should have some lemon flavoring in the cake part of the cookie. I baked a batch this past weekend (I use a Nancy Baggett recipe) for my fiance's son, a Long Island transplant in New Hampshire, and both he and his girlfriend said they didn't recall them having a lemon flavor. This was quite disconcerting to me, thus I spent the last hour or two scouring the web for support documentation. A wikipedia entry mentions the lemon. Every recipe I've ever seen includes lemon. Finally, eGulleteers have mentioned the lemon. I feel vindicated!

BTW, a whole thread on black & whites? I LOVE eGullet!!

-- Lisa

Edited January 28, 2008 by abooja (log)

[abooja]

A good friend of mine, a b&w aficianado, told me that she, too, does not recall ever tasting lemon in one of these damn cookies. She went so far as to say she might be inclined to spew it out were she ever to taste such a thing.

I contended that the spate of bad, inauthentic black & whites is to blame for this. What do you all say? I've been baking these cookies for a while now, feeling quite impressed with myself, and now I feel like a fraud. I've never been a fan of these cookies, but I do enjoy the ones I have baked lately. I feel I have no black & white chops, even though I am from Brooklyn, NY and have been exposed to them my whole life. I need to know what the real deal is supposed to taste like. I am completely obsessed at this point.

Thanks for your input.

-- Lisa

Edited January 29, 2008 by abooja (log)

[Lkfarkas]

I remember having some amazing black & white cookies from NY once - they were soft, cakey, and wonderful. However, all the ones I see at the bakeries are hard, or the icing is awful...

We have a lot of East coast kids that come to our shop, and I'd love to offer a great b&w cookie...anyone have a good recipe to share?

[Rebecca263]

Forget me helping you, I can't make these to save my life, but I CAN tell you that the best recipes, the MOSt authentic tasting black & whites, are the ones with some lemon in the recipe. I do not know why, that is just the way it is.

[Rebecca263]

You can't taste the lemon in a black & white cookie, but if you eat a cookie without it, the flavor just misses the mark, somehow.

[mukki]

I remember having some amazing black & white cookies from NY once - they were soft, cakey, and wonderful. However, all the ones I see at the bakeries are hard, or the icing is awful...

We have a lot of East coast kids that come to our shop, and I'd love to offer a great b&w cookie...anyone have a good recipe to share?

←

I made a great B&W cookies out of Rosie's Chocolate-Packed Jam-Filled Butter Rich No-Holds-Barred Cookie Book that was cakey and soft. She calls them Half Moons.

[Lkfarkas]

I have that book! Yay! Thanks!

[chefpeon]

We have a lot of East coast kids that come to our shop, and I'd love to offer a great b&w cookie...anyone have a good recipe to share?

If you look upthread, I posted the recipe I used....its great.

Black and White Recipe

[JFLinLA]

How funny. I just had a dozen black & whites delivered to my son before he starts his final exams at college. I found a place on line called the Black & White Cookie Company. Price was good and he was surprised and thrilled.