Black and white cookies have been a New York staple since Dutch settlers introduced similar sweets in the 17th century. The cookie mirrors the texture of cake, but the key to a delicious black and white cookie is its frosting. After all, the half-chocolate, half-vanilla treat needs to look the part. Covering your cookie in two flavors is no easy feat; icing can prove finicky, and black and white cookies are all about a clean divide. To overcome these challenges and neatly coat her cookies, celebrity chef Ina Garten employs one common kitchen tool — a spoon.
Garten recommends more than a few tricks when making cookies, from freezing cookie dough before baking to softening butter overnight. However, her black and white cookies require little thought beyond opening your silverware drawer. Once her cookies are baked and cooled — and her frosting ready to go — Garten uses a spoon to drizzle her glaze meticulously. She starts with one flavor, pouring it slowly over one side of the cookie. In doing so, she draws a line down the middle of the dessert, creating that trademark look. Once one side is frosted, Garten grabs another spoon and repeats the process with the other flavor of glaze.
To employ this trick for yourself, you’ll want to make your frosting thick. Glaze consistencies range from cookie to cookie, but Garten keeps hers smooth and spoon-able.
Make 2 glazes (and use 2 spoons) for perfect black and white cookies
Ina Garten’s glazes embrace entirely different sets of ingredients, both of which result in a thick consistency. For the chocolate half, Garten melts butter, chocolate, and instant coffee, stirring until the ingredients come together. She then spoons the mixture over her cookies with ease.
For the vanilla glaze, Garten relies predominantly on powdered sugar, which she whisks with corn syrup, vanilla, and heavy cream. The final texture is thick, uniform, and better to be spooned — rather than poured — over a cookie. This consistency therefore works especially well with the spoon trick, though other black and white cookies take more of a buttercream approach to the glaze. Meanwhile, others utilize thinner, runnier icings. The best texture is therefore a matter of personal preference, and using a spoon may require some trial and error.
Of course, if you want to keep things simple, you can easily throw together a basic glaze with nothing more than powdered sugar and water. Just make sure to divvy up the result, so one side is black and the other white.
