This is a black and white cookie.
Topped with dark chocolate icing on one half
and vanilla on the other,
it's a classic dessert that is only made
right here on the East Coast.
If you grew up in New York,
chances are you've seen black and white cookies
at shops dotted across the state.
Today, we visit Zaro's Bakery,
a company that ships its cookies nationwide,
to get a behind-the-scenes look at the making process.
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can sell 100,000 cookies each year.
While recipes may vary from shop to shop,
the cookies are always slathered
with rich chocolate icing on one side
and vanilla on the other.
Here in New York City, you're likely to find
a flatter, denser, vanilla cake-like cookie
with a smooth, shiny fondant icing.
Meanwhile, in upstate New York,
Massachusetts, and Connecticut,
don't even think about calling them black and whites.
The cookies here are the half-moon variety.
And although these cookies have made quite the footprint,
it's the New York City style that's made its claim to fame.
Grabbed a couple of black and whites.
And a black and white cookie for me.
Medha: The recipe is simple.
It starts off with ingredients like oil, eggs,
and lots of sour cream.
Michael: We use sour cream. It helps to
tenderize the cookie and keep it moist and soft,
and it also gives it a little bit of sour flavor.
Medha: Is the purpose of the sour cream
also to make it that spongelike texture?
Michael: Yes, it will. It helps.
It certainly helps with the texture.
Doing great.
Medha: Good! OK, we did it.
It's messy and fun. [laughs]
Next comes the whole milk.
Michael: We're adding milk again, more fat.
Keeping it creamy, keeping the cookie soft,
and helping to maintain that cakey texture.
Medha: The dry ingredients consist of baking soda,
baking powder, salt, and natural vanilla flavor.
But the key to black and whites
is to add enough flour so the batter holds shape.
What ingredients in this
make it more like a cake consistency
versus a cookie consistency?
Michael: Well, we use a combination of AP flour
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We do use honey.
But those are the ingredients that we use
to really keep it moist and fluffy, like cake.
Medha: Why honey? Michael: It's something,
we've used honey for a long time.
Honey does help cake and cookies to retain moisture
better than just regular sugar will.
Medha: It smells really good.
Michael: This mixer is,
it's got to be 50 years old, at least.
And it's one of these machines that, you know,
they don't make them like this anymore.
For some reason, when we've tried to mix
our black and whites in some of the other mixers,
we've not gotten the result we like.
Medha: And what's that result?
Michael: A soft, airy, well-mixed, beautiful cookie.
Medha: As soon as the flour mixture is complete
and has zero clumps, bakers move on
to the making of the fondant.
Michael: It's icing sugar and water,
for the most part.
And then the chocolate is icing sugar, water,
and cocoa powder for color and chocolate flavor.
There are some slightly different ingredients
within the icing sugar that help it to set up.
We've used the fondant as long as I've been alive.
Our great-grandfather decided
that was how he was making them.
I do think it was more of a New York City,
East Coast way to make the cookie.
Maybe New Yorkers don't have time to carry around
a black and white cookie with buttercream on top.
It would make too big of a mess. It could be.
Medha: All right. Do you need help?
Michael: I would love some help.
[Medha grunts]
Michael: Yeah, it's about 50 pounds.
Medha: It's a little smoky.
Michael: So, we are going to mix the icing sugar
for about four minutes at a very low speed
to beat out any lumps and make sure
it's nice and smooth and ready to take liquid.
I am setting up another timer now for four minutes.
And on that four minutes,
we are going to pour the water through the grate,
into here, as it mixes slowly on first speed.
It's getting there. You could see in the center,
see how it's starting to get shiny?
Medha: Yeah.
Michael: That's what we're looking for throughout.
Medha: And so if it was a chocolate fondant,
you would put cocoa powder as the last step?
Michael: Correct. You get a different flavor,
but they're the same base.
Medha: What do you prefer?
Michael: Chocolate. All the way.
Medha: Yeah. Me too, me too.
Michael: I'm a chocolate lover.
Medha: It kind of has a sticky texture to it.
Michael: It does. It will be very sticky.
It will have a stringiness to it.
We're looking to get a very nice coating,
where you're not seeing the bottom of the cookie.
Medha: And how long did this process take
your great-grandfather to develop?
Michael: When he came from Poland,
he came from Poland as a trained baker.
So somebody in Poland trained him
and taught him how to bake.
Medha: Once the icing is at its optimal thickness,
bakers store the icing at ambient temperature
in small buckets.
Michael: It's naturally cool at this point.
We keep it at room temperature.
The ambient around here stays at about 68 degrees.
We make about 400 pounds.
Well, sadly, during the times of the pandemic,
we're making about 100 pounds a week.
Before the pandemic, we were probably making
500 pounds of icing a week.
Medha: This is fun.
Michael: So you can see the consistency, right?
Michael: Yeah, it's very nice.
It looks like frosting,
but you can tell that if it stayed on a cookie,
it has more of a sticky consistency.
Michael: The longer we wait to do this,
the harder it will get to get out of this bucket.
Medha: How long can the fondant last?
Michael: It can last a couple of weeks.
It's basically just sugar and water,
so it can sit out.
Medha: Oh, my God.
All these things are much harder than they look.
Michael: Yes, it's very true.
I'm sure in every place you go, they usually are.
Medha: Yeah.
It looks heavenly to eat.
And it does have a thicker consistency than frosting,
and it's definitely stickier.
Michael: This just came out of the mixing bowl.
And as you saw, when we were pulling it out,
it was still pretty viscous and liquid. It had flow to it.
You can see the flow is now stopping,
and it's starting to solidify.
Medha: Oh, yeah.
Michael: And this will get, it will never get hard,
but it will get to a point where it's set up and dry,
and you could touch it and it won't leave fingerprints,
it won't leave marks.
And then underneath,
you'll have a little bit of kind of tender,
more tender icing underneath.
And so that's why it's time-sensitive
to get it out of the bowl.
'Cause if we left it in the bowl,
from the top down, it will continue,
wherever is in the air will continue to harden.
Medha: So, we are making the chocolate icing,
and I can already smell the cocoa.
Can you talk about the chocolate fondant, anything special?
Oh, my God.
Michael: My desire to bathe in it?
Is that acceptable to say on television,
or no? Medha: [laughs] Yes.
Michael: What we're doing right now is warming the fondant
so that we can manageably spread it.
Because the longer you wait,
that same setup process will happen again.
So it will cool down, it will get harder,
and then you'll get inconsistent spread on each cookie.
You know, full transparency, I'm not good at this.
Medha: That's OK.
Michael: But what the basics of it are
is we're going to scoop up some fondant.
You're going to wipe it across this way.
You're then going to come back this way,
toward you, to get a nice clean line.
You want to get a good line right down the center.
And then you go back one more time and you clean the edge.
It's really important we put the white fondant on first.
Medha: Why?
Michael: And we let the white fondant go on, it sets up.
And the reason we do it is so that
you get a really nice clean line.
If you try and put them on at the same time,
this line tends to bleed.
Medha: And I only get a little bit, right?
Michael: That's perfect.
OK, so you can go, that's fine, go toward you.
Now keep it the same way, and then go away from you again.
Medha: Like this?
Michael: You want to spread out to, like, here, if you can.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Then go back one more toward you
and spread a little further that way.
Not bad.
Spread there a little.
Medha: It's too thick. Michael: That's not bad! No!
Hey, for your first time, it's pretty good.
I'm very impressed.
Medha: Thank you so much. Michael: Very impressed.
Medha: There you go.
Why is it important to frost the bottom of the cookie?
Michael: The cookies bake this way.
So they get deposited, and almost like a cake,
you get this little kind of crown on top of them.
That's how they bake.
You just don't get that really pretty edge
and that beautiful separation between the two.
It's much harder on the round side of the cookie.
We believe in the tradition to this,
and we like doing them by hand.
Medha: The vanilla fondant has hardened,
and now we're adding the chocolate,
and it's a little bit more of a test
because we've got to get that perfect line.
I think that line is solid.
Michael: Yeah. There's a little too much on,
but that's OK. It's going to taste really good.
All right, so go for it.
Medha: Do you want me to do this one?
Michael: Yeah, absolutely.
Medha: OK.
If you were to bake all this again,
what part of the process would you enjoy the most?
Michael: I would go with the eating part.
Medha: I never heard of black and white cookies
prior to coming to New York.
Michael: Where did you grow up?
Medha: I live in Midwest, like Chicago.
Michael: OK, that makes sense.
Medha: But I read online somewhere
that the Midwesterners call them harlequins.
Michael: Really? Medha: Yeah.
And then do you know of the German version of this?
The Amerikaners?
Michael: Yes, I have read about them,
and it's very similar.
Medha: Yeah, it was brought over there
with the soldiers during World War II,
and they brought over this cookie.
And so the German soldiers were like,
"Oh, it's the Amerikaner cookie."
Michael: Our family lore is that our great-grandfather
had a customer who'd come in with two small children
who couldn't afford to buy two cookies.
One liked vanilla, one liked chocolate.
My great-grandfather started doing icing
one half vanilla and one half chocolate.
Medha: Your brother actually was telling us
everyone has a different story on how they eat the cookie?
Michael: Yes. I generally take mine,
and if I'm going to eat the whole cookie,
I'll kind of work from here,
as I prefer the chocolate.
If I'm sharing the cookie, I usually break off
the vanilla and give it to somebody else,
and I eat the chocolate.
Like, my wife loves the vanilla, and I like the chocolate,
and so we're a good black and white pairing.
Fill it up, we'll get as much as we can in here.
Medha: Oh, my God.
Michael: Try and get low on it.
Medha: All these things are
much harder than they look.
Michael: Yes, it's very true.
And I'm sure at every place you go,
they usually are. Medha: Yeah.