Dining In - Black and White Cookies

Black & White Cookies - Chloe's Vegan Desserts

I loved these Black and White Cookies as a kid! Also called Half Moon Cookies, I had a strategy for eating them, chocolate half first and saving the best for last, the vanilla half second. You can usually find these in the Northeast, especially in bakeries in the North End in Boston. It had been a while since I had one, even before I was vegan. I certainly had never attempted to make them, something about the cake-like cookie and crisp, even frosting intimidated me. After more baking experience, I was excited and eager to make these when I discovered the vegan recipe in Chloe's Vegan Desserts (buy your copy here). 

The cookie is usually more cake-like and this cookie recipe was easy to follow and tasted delicious, with a bit of salt that went perfectly with the sweetness! I was skeptical about the icing and doubted that mine would look as good as the traditional cookies and the photo in the cookbook. I prefer the black and white cookies made with frosting, but this version is very popular, as well. The icing recipe requires quite a bit of powdered sugar, but the consistency turns out right in the end. I layered on the icing a few times allowing it to harden up in the refrigerator in between coats. I shared these with a group of non-vegan friends and they loved them, some going for seconds. I will definitely be making these again!

Cookies
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup canola oil

1/3 cup almond milk

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Icing
4 cups powdered sugar
6 tablespoons water, divided
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons lemon juice


To Prepare Cookies:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. 

In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, and salt. In a separate small bowl, mix the wet ingredients together - oil, milk, lemon juice, vanilla. 

Pour the wet mixture into the dry and blend together, but don't overstir. 

Scoop about 1/4 cup batter onto pan and shape into a circle, leave about 3 inches between cookies. The recipe says this should make about 7 cookies, but I made mine a bit smaller and ended up with 10. Either way will work, and I had leftover icing even with the extra cookies. Bake for about 16 minutes. Allow to cool completely before icing. 

Black & White Cookies Before Icing

To Prepare Icing: 

In a large bowl mix together 5 tablespoons of water with the powdered sugar. Set aside about 3/4 cup or half of the mixture to prepare the chocolate icing. In a separate bowl add cocoa powder and 1 tablespoon water to this half and stir to make chocolate icing. In the remaining white icing, add lemon juice. You can add more water or sugar as needed to get a fairly thick consistency. 


To Assemble Cookies:

Flip Cookies Upside Down Before Frosting

With a slanted frosting knife, start with vanilla icing and coat half of the bottom of each cookie. Next apply the chocolate icing. This is where the original recipe stops, but I felt that the cookies needed a thicker coating, and there was a lot of leftover icing. Allow icing to harden or cool in refrigerator and apply additional coats as needed to fully cover cookies. Also, try to keep the cookies level as the icing may become uneven and "melt" off.