No Trip to New York Necessary: Black and White Cookies at Home

Black and white cookies are an iconic New York City treat! My black and white cookie recipe will teach you exactly how to make them. The cookies are perfectly cakey, and that shiny two-tone frosting is as tasty as it is eye-catching!

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Ingredients
Cookie
½ cup unsalted butter, softened (113g)
¾ cup granulated sugar (150g)
1 large egg, room temperature preferred
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ⅔ cup cake flour (190g)
¾ teaspoon baking powder
⅛ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon table salt
3 Tablespoons buttermilk (substitute: https://sugarspunrun.com/easy-buttermilk-substitute/)
Icing
4 ½ cups powdered sugar (562g)
4 Tablespoons light corn syrup
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
4-6 Tablespoons milk, as needed
4 teaspoons Dutch cocoa powder

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Instructions
00:00 Introduction
For the cookies
00:15 Preheat oven to 350F (175C) and line baking sheets with parchment paper, set aside.
00:20 In a large mixing bowl, use an electric mixer to beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
00:50 Add egg and vanilla extract and stir well to combine.
01:48 In a separate, medium sized mixing bowl, whisk together cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
02:38 With your mixer on slow speed, alternate adding the flour mixture and the buttermilk to the wet mixture, adding about half at a time.
03:25 Scoop cookie dough by 1 ½ Tablespoon-sized scoop onto prepared baking sheet, spacing cookies at least 2” apart. Bake in pre-heated oven for 10 minutes. Cookies should be just barely browning on the bottom of the edge, and when you flip them over they should be slightly browned on the bottom.
Frosting/Assembly
04:51 In a large mixing bowl whisk together sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, and 4 Tablespoons of milk. The icing should reach a consistency that ribbons easily off the whisk, holding its shape for several seconds before dissolving back into the bowl. If it is too thick, add more milk, a teaspoon at a time.
06:25 Flip each cookie over and spread a heaping Tablespoon of icing evenly over the surface of the cookie, spreading all the way to the edges.
07:25 When all cookies are iced, take your remaining frosting and whisk in dutch cocoa, as well as additional milk 1 teaspoon at a time until icing is a smooth spreadable consistency.
08:03 Frost one half of the cookie with the cocoa icing. (I like to use a piping bag to make a nice straight line across the center and fill in one half, it’s neater than simply spreading over the cookie but your choice!)
08:25 Allow cookies to sit until icing is hardened before enjoying (could take several hours depending on humidity and thickness of icing)!

Notes
Larger cookies
Classic New York Black and White cookies are BIG. I prefer mine smaller-sized and scoop 1 ½-Tablespoon sized scoops, which yields 18 cookies. However, if you prefer your cookies to be traditionally sized (big!), scoop ¼-cup scoops of dough and bake for 12-14 minutes. You will get 7 cookies this way (psst: the recipe doubles easily with no adjustments if you want to make more!)
Storing
Allow the frosting to set completely then store in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

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Hey guys, Sam here. And today, I wanted to show you how to make those classic New York black and white cookies. If you’ve ever seen them before, they’re usually huge, like almost the size of your face, half black on top, half white on top, a fairly plain, cakey cookie. Let’s go ahead and make them—very easy. Get your oven preheating to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. For this recipe, we’re going to be using just one half cup or one stick of softened, unsalted butter. And before I go any further, I want to tell you this recipe makes like 18 cookies if you’re going to make them small, the way I normally like to. But if you want to make them big, which I’ll show you how to do today, it’s only going to make like seven cookies. Feel free to double this recipe. No problems with doubling it. So a half cup, 113 grams of butter. You’ll need 3/4 cup or 150 grams of granulated sugar here. And we’re going to beat these together until it’s light and fluffy. Alright, next thing you need is one large egg. Ideally, this should be room temperature, but that’s not as pressing of an issue with this recipe as it is in some of my others. A little messy there. Okay, we’ll add that. And then, we’ll add our vanilla extract. You just need a half teaspoon of vanilla extract. As I may have mentioned earlier, these cookies are very different from like, you know, your classic chocolate chip. They are quite cakey— they’re supposed to be. I really tried to emulate that classic black-and-white cookie texture all the way through. I spent a lot of time on these. All right, let’s stir this together. And of course, this recipe could absolutely be made in a stand mixer if you have one and prefer that. Today, I am just using my electric hand mixer. Regardless of how you are mixing, it is always a good idea to pause periodically and scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl because ensuring that your ingredients are well Incorporated is very important to making sure anything turns out properly. Alright, this looks pretty good—looks great. Pat myself on the back there. This step’s very easy. And let’s grab a different bowl for our dry ingredients. We’re going to start with 1 and 2/3 cups of cake flour. Cake flour really is important to giving you like the classic texture and the finer crumb that you’re going to find in like a New York bakery. I will include instructions in the description if you only have all-purpose flour, and it’s like the middle of the night, and you really want to make these anyway, but I do want to note that they turn out better with cake flour. If you’re going to substitute, see you my notes. Don’t take it upon yourself to make something up, because I’ve been having that happen a lot with my cake flour recipes, and then people get mad at me, but I do have instructions. It sounds like our oven is preheated. And that is 190 grams of cake flour. Then, we’ll add 3/4 teaspoon of baking powder. And just a small bit of baking soda goes a long way, that’s an eighth teaspoon. And then for our salt, you will need a half teaspoon of table salt. We’ll go ahead and stir everything together. Get your dry ingredients well Incorporated. Okay, we’re going to add this to our butter mixture in just a moment, but, before we go any further, we want to measure out our buttermilk. Buttermilk is another key ingredient. It works better than regular milk because you’re going to get more depth of flavor and a more moist and tender crumb that’s still stable enough for icing. I have a substitute if you need it, but the real stuff’s best. Am I talking too much? Sorry, I feel like all these things are important to know. We’re going to alternate adding the dry ingredients and the buttermilk. And you can do this by hand or just use your mixer on low speed. Just start with the flour mixture. When that’s mostly combined I’ll add like half of the buttermilk. We’ll add more of our flour mixture, so flour goes in in three parts, buttermilk in two. And more buttermilk. We will of course scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl again. Make sure everything’s nice and uniform. All right, you are going to need a parchment paper lined baking sheet. I find the huge cookies to be a little bit much— which is kind of saying a lot, considering like I have like the biggest sweet tooth of anyone I know. So typically when I make these, I use my one and a half tablespoon scoop, do a level one and a half tablespoon. I’m going to do a batch each way so you can see both of them, but, for those large cookies, you’re going to need 1/4 cup of batter or dough per cookie, so I like using this cookie scoop here. I’ll try to remember to link to it. We’ll do like a couple of these big guys. Give them space because they are going to spread. And the larger cookies usually need about 12 to 14 minutes in the oven. And we’ll also really quickly do a batch of the smaller cookies. Again, give them space on the baking sheet, one and a half tablespoons. These typically need to bake for about 10 minutes. Regardless of the size you’re making, when they are finished baking, they should have some light golden brown around the edges. Unlike many of my cookies, you actually don’t want to underbake these because then they’ll be a little bit too soft and fragile to decorate. Here’s our large ones and our smaller ones. Now, these cookies are going to need to cool before you can ice them, but they cool pretty quickly. I will usually let them sit on the baking sheet for a couple of minutes. And then, once they’re not too hot to handle, I will carefully remove them to a cooling rack to cool completely. Be gentle because they could be a little fragile while they’re warm. You see that? That is a sign of improper mixing. Probably had a little bit of butter on the side of the bowl and scraped it up when I scooped. Terrible. Amateur. So we’ll let these cool and we’ll make our frosting. Now, we are not using a butter cream. Black and white cookies are made with what a lot of people call, like more of a pourable fondant. It’s very similar to a glaze, but it’s enriched, and we’re going to be using corn syrup to give us the proper texture. Now, we need a lot of powdered sugar for this recipe, so much that I kind of couldn’t justify making more cookies because if people looked and saw like eight cups of powdered sugar, I thought they might lose their minds, so this is four and a half cups of powdered sugar. And let’s talk corn syrup. Light corn syrup is what you want for this recipe. Otherwise, your white frosting won’t be very white, if you use dark. I’m adding 4 tablespoons of corn syrup. No corn syrup left behind. Corn syrup, I feel is worth noting, is not the same as high fructose corn syrup. They are different. I’m comfortable using corn syrup. If you think you shouldn’t use it, you could leave it out, but you’re going to le—need more milk, and you’re going to have like a richer, very sweet frosting that’s more like a glaze, so it’s doable, but it’s not my preference. The corn syrup does add a nice touch. Now, we’ll add 3/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract in here. Now, the exact amount of milk you need is going to range a little bit. I have four tablespoons measured out here for now. We’re going to add like three tablespoons of it. And you can whisk everything together using a whisk if you prefer. I like to make things easier and use my mixer, and just stir everything together until it’s combined. And then, we’ll add more milk as needed to get to the right texture and the right consistency. So what I’m looking for is a consistency that just kind of ribbons off the whisk when Iift it, and then it holds its shape for several seconds before it dissolves back into the bowl. Alright, let’s check on our cookies, make sure they’re nice and cool…and they are. So the thing with black and white cookies is you’re not going to ice the tops, you’re going to ice the bottoms, which is why I flipped some of them. I’ll flip the rest over. Now decorating can get a little bit messy, so I will usually lay down some wax paper to catch all the spills. Oh no! Cookie down! And then, we’re going to frost the whole bottom of the cookie with white frosting. And you can use a piping bag for this if you want. Sometimes I do, but, normally, I’ll just take a generous amount of the frosting and slide it over the cookie. And this is why it’s important your cookies are a little golden brown and that they’re cooled completely. Otherwise, they’re going to start to break at this point. Nikki says I’m shaking. Too much caffeine today. I’m just really excited about the cookies. So I do all of the cookies with a layer of the white frosting first. The big ones need more. I do always like to try to make sure the icing goes over to the edge, so the whole surface of the cookie is covered. And if it spills, its really not a big deal. There’s a little extra with this frosting recipe, so you have a little wiggle room. Now, we have our white half done, we need the black half. So to do this, we’re just going to take four teaspoons of Dutch cocoa powder, add that in, and stir it in. And you’ll notice that despite the fact that they’re called black and white cookies, half of them is going to be pretty brown. If you want a true black, you’re going to have to add like a little bit of black food coloring. And I also tested this recipe using black cocoa, which works, but then you no longer have the like authentic black and white flavor. It kind of tastes like an Oreo cookie instead because that’s just the flavor of black cocoa. And after you add the cocoa, it’s going to dry it out a bit, so just add like another splash of milk until we get back to that consistency that we had before. There we go. That looks good. Now if I’m trying to make these look super polished, I’ll usually put the chocolate frosting in a piping bag, and I’ll pipe it on. If I’m a little less particular, I’ll take the chocolate icing, draw a line, and then, once I have half of it mostly filled in, I’ll use an offset spatula to nudge the frosting and cover that half. Make sure you support these large cookies in the center. The frosting takes some time to set. How long it takes is going to depend on the humidity of the day, your kitchen, exactly how wet you made your frosting, a lot of factors. I recommend letting them sit for at least an hour and usually that’s not long enough. Sometimes I’ll even leave them sitting on my counter overnight— I don’t cover them or anything—I just let them sit, so they’re completely dry. If you bite into them while the frosting’s still wet, it seems too sweet and it’s not enjoyable. It’s not an enjoyable cookie to me, so I recommend letting the frosting set completely. So once the frosting has set, it should be nice and smooth. I hope you enjoyed this recipe. And if you try it, let me know what you think. I always love hearing from you. That is a big cookie. Here you can see the inside. You can see it’s a, like nicely cakey…it’s a really nice, tender crumb. It’s really good. Almost had an accident. Low speed. Slow down. I feel like my face is weird. It just feels weird. What is on my arm? Gosh, I’m shaking today. *gasp* Nooooo! That was my favorite one. I’m so cool.