Bake 52 Week 26: Black and White Cookies

This week it was my turn to host - first time!  I wanted to thank everyone for letting me join your baking group, even though you were about half way through.  I've really enjoyed it.  I guess I ought to introduce myself since none of you in the group know me (except my sister Val).  I just moved to Southern California to California City (about 100 miles north of LA).  This is my first time living away from home (Utah), so I found myself with time on my hands.  I miss all those family gatherings that took up my time in Utah but I'm having fun filling my time with baking.  I work for Rio Tinto (parent company of Kennecott Utah Copper) and my move to California was to take a new job with their Boron mine in the middle of the Mojave Desert.  I have two daughters, Jasmine, 18, and just graduated and Jade, 17, one more year of high school.  They live in Utah with their Mom.  My husband and I sure miss seeing them regularly. 

I picked the Black and White cookies.  I can't remember what attracted me to the recipe to be honest.  When I read through this weekend before starting it sounded like a frosted sugar cookie.  I've never been wowed by sugar cookies but a cookie is a cookie and at least half of it was going to chocolate icing.  I figured it had to taste good. 

First I gathered all the ingredients for the cookies, the cast of characters:

I didn't have any whole milk but I had whipping cream, so I measured out half a cup whipping cream and half cup of 1% milk.  Later I saw in the book that you can substitute 2/3 cup 1% milk + 1/3 cup half-and-half for whole milk.  I still had time to switch to that but I wasn't sure half-and-half was the same as whipping cream and half a cup is close enough to 1/3 cup that I wasn't going to worry about it. 

Next step adjust your oven shelves to the top middle and the bottom middle and set the temperature to 350 degrees.

Next I lined my baking sheets (I used half sheet pans) with parchment paper. 

My husband asked why I did that.  I have no idea other than the recipe told me to and it makes for easy clean-up.  Maybe these cookies are prone to sticking??

Next I weighed out my flour.  For me I like weighting powdering ingredients like flour and powdered sugar.  It's faster and more accurate. 

 I added in the baking powder and salt and then stirred the mix with a fork.

Then I moved on to the wet ingredients.  To the butter (which I had pulled out of the freezer and softened in the microwave) I added the sugar.

The recipe said to use an electric mixer, so I did but I wish I had got out my kitchenaid mixer.  After beating the butter and sugar for about 10 minutes it still looked grainy.

I beat it for another 5 minutes or so before I gave up getting it to be light and fluffy and added the eggs, vanilla and lemon extract.

Once I beat in the eggs, vanilla and extract then the mix looked light and fluffy.

The next step was to add the flour and the milk, alternating. 

Here's another time I wish I'd used my mixer. By the time I got all the flour and milk in the bowl was really full and I was getting dough all over the place!

The dough was really soft and creamy.  Not stiff like cookies I've made in the past.  The recipe calls for dipping out 1/4-cup of dough for each cookie. 

The cookies are supposed to be 2 inches apart but I didn't want to be baking these all day so I didn't keep them spaced out that far. 

I just used the back of a spoon to smooth them out.  I wasn't able to get them as round and pretty as they were in the book.

I baked them for 8 minutes and then rotated them and cooked them for another 8 minutes.  They didn't have any color on them so I put them back in for about 2 minutes.

As you can see my cookies spread out and cooked together a bit but not bad.  They were just barely brown around the edges when I pulled them out. 

I ended up with 26 cookies, so pretty close to the 24 I was supposed to.  Once all the cookies were done I tidied up a bit and then got started on the icing. 

The cast of characters:

So once again I used my scale for the powder ingredient. 

I used a medium pot heat the water and corn syrup.  Once it was boiling I took it off the heat and dumped in the powdered sugar.

Once the powdered sugar (and vanilla) was all mixed in I dumped about half of it out into another bowl and added the chocolate to what was left in the pan. 

As you can see I forgot to melt the chocolate first... Luckily there was enough heat left in the pan to melt the chocolate for me. 

I was pretty generous with the chocolate icing and tried to make sure I covered just more than half of every cookie.  Once I had mixed in the chocolate it looked like I had shorted the white frosting...  Next time when it says to "measure" out half of the icing I'll have to dump all of it in a measuring cup and then put half in some other container. 

Half done...waiting on the icing to set.

I was right about not spliting the icing very well.  I had left over chocolate and ran out of the white icing before I was done with all the cookies.

All done, just need to let the icing set up. 

I fiinished just in time to head to a party.  When we got home it was late so I went right to bed.  But these cookies visited me in my dreams.  As soon as I got up I had to have one. 

They were really yummy.  The lemon flavor was really subtle but there.  It really accented the icing.  The cookie was soft and tender.  A great consistency for a cookie.  I love the chocolate icing.  I could have eaten it with a spoon (as a matter of fact I did!).  The white icing was way too sweet on it's own and I was worried it wouldn't taste very good.  But on the cookie it was perfect.  Jonathan loves them too - that's really high praise! 

If you are looking for something relatively simple but classy and very, very tasty you should try this.  Here's the full recipe.

BLACK AND WHITE COOKIES

MAKES about 24 large cookies

Don’t substitute “lemon flavor” or lemon oil for the lemon extract.  However, in a pinch you can substitute fresh lemon juice.  If the chocolate icing cools so that it is no longer spreadable, microwave it for 30 seconds to resoften.

COOKIES

4       cups (16 ounces) cake flour

½      teaspoon baking powder

½      teaspoon salt

16     tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 ¾   cups (12 ¼ ounces) granulated sugar

2       large eggs

1       teaspoon vanilla extract

½      teaspoon lemon extract (see note above)

1         cup whole milk

ICINGS

¼      cup light corn syrup

⅓      cup water

5       cups (20 ounces) confectioners’ sugar

½      teaspoon vanilla extract

2         ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted

2–4  teaspoons water

1.        FOR THE COOKIES:  Adjust the oven racks to the upper-middle and lower-middle positions and heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.  Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl.

2.        In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 6 minutes.  Beat in the eggs, vanilla, an lemon extract until combined, about 30 seconds, scraping down the bowl and beaters as needed.

3.        Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in one-third of the flour mixture, followed by half of the milk.  Repeat with half of the remaining flour mixture, and the remaining milk.  Beat in the remaining flour mixture until combined.

4.        Scoop ¼-cup mounds of batter onto the prepared baking sheets, spaced about 2 inches apart.  Use the back of a spoon or your finger dipped in water to smooth the tops of the cookies.  Bake the cookies until the edges are just beginning to turn light golden brown, about 15 minutes, switching and rotating the baking sheets halfway through baking.

5.        Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely, about 1 hour.  Repeat with the remaining dough using cooled, freshly lined baking sheets.

6.        FOR THE ICINGS:  Bring the corn syrup and water to a boil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.  Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla until smooth.  Measure half of the icing into a separate bowl and whisk in the melted chocolate and 2 to 4 teaspoons of the water as needed until the mixture is smooth and spreadable.

7.        Place 2 large wire racks over parchment paper for easy cleanup.  Following the photos, spread about 2 tablespoons of the chocolate icing over half of each cookie with a small spatula, then let sit on the wire racks until the icing has just set, about 15 minutes.  Spread the vanilla icing over the other half of each cookie and let sit until the icings have hardened, about 1 hour, before serving. 

Check out the links below to see other reviews on this recipe.

...