- See, the key to eating a black and white cookie, Elaine,
is you wanna get some black and some white in each bite.
Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate.
And yet, still, somehow, racial harmony eludes us.
If people would only look to the cookie,
all our problems would be solved!
Look to the cookie, Elaine.
Look to the cookie. (audience laughs)
- [Babish] Hey, what's up, guys?
Welcome back to "Binging with Babish," where this week,
we're returning to the fictional land of New York City
to take a look at the storied black and white cookie,
the majority of which, like this one, kinda suck.
If you get 'em fresh-baked at a place like Zaro's,
you're in for a better time,
but the pre-packaged ones you find next to the Honey Buns
in the gas station are just not worth the calories.
So let's see if we can whip one up
that won't break your vomit streak.
We're starting with one stick or 113 grams
of unsalted, room-temperature butter,
which we're gonna beat together
with 130 grams of white sugar,
four to five minutes on medium-high speed
until light and fluffy,
remembering to scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Then, onto a sheet of parchment paper,
we are sifting together 125 grams each
all-purpose flour and cake flour.
This is gonna help prevent lumps in our resultant batter,
and the parchment paper acts
as a sort of lifting and dumping mechanism.
At this point, you're gonna realize
that you forgot to add two room-temperature large eggs,
beating together with the sugar and butter mixture
until well combined.
Now we're gonna start adding the dry
and some more wet ingredients in stages.
First, we're gonna add about 1/3 of the dry stuff.
Paddle that together until it is homogenous.
Go ahead and scrape down the sides of the bowl,
and then we're gonna add our wet ingredients
in a single unified slurry.
In a thing with a spout,
we are combining 30 grams of honey, 60 grams of sour cream,
one teaspoon vanilla extract, one teaspoon lemon extract,
and 60 grams of whole milk.
Go ahead and tiny whisk this together
until it is a homogenous goo.
Now, it's at this point that you're gonna realize
that you forgot to add your baking soda and salt
to your dry ingredients.
It's not too late, though,
so go ahead and re-sift your flours,
this time with one teaspoon of kosher salt
and 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda.
Now, we're back to business as usual,
adding 1/3 of the wet ingredients at a time,
beating together, scraping down the sides,
adding 1/3 of the dry ingredients,
and repeating until everything's added
and your batter is thick and smooth.
Now, it's at this point
that I like to give things a good old-fashioned manual mix.
There can always be pockets of flour or streaks of egg
undiscovered by the stand mixer's paddle.
Don't taste the raw batter if you care about your body.
Then, by virtue of an iced cream scoop,
we're gonna scoop this batter in equal amounts,
well spaced apart on a super-nonstick surface,
like a Silpat.
I also wanted to see if it would work
on some greased parchment,
so I'm gonna try both, placing the cookies
into a preheated 350 degree Fahrenheit oven
for 12 to 15 minutes,
until lightly browned around the edges
and set in the center.
Plus, I learned that you apparently don't need
to grease down your parchment paper.
While these guys cool on the baking sheet,
we need to make our fondant icing.
200 grams of powdered sugar,
one teaspoon vanilla extract,
30 grams of light corn syrup,
and just a little splash of water.
You want just enough
to give it a thick, viscous consistency.
And because this mixture
can sometimes end up a little beige,
I'm gonna add some white food coloring.
Regular-size whisk that together until smooth.
Press plastic wrap directly down onto the fondant,
and then it's time to make the chocolate version.
Same exact recipe, but with 30 grams of dark cocoa powder
and an extra five grams light corn syrup.
Mix that together until smooth and viscous,
cover with plastic wrap
and (indistinct) it down to the surface of the stuff,
and once the cookies are cool, it's time to ice.
We're gonna start with the vanilla fondant,
trying to evenly cover half the cookie.
It's okay if you go over, though,
because we can just cover it up with the chocolate.
Use a little offset spatula to smear the fondant on there,
and then we want that fondant to set
before we add any chocolate.
One problem, though: I made my fondant a little too thin.
If your icing starts sinking into
and absorbing into the cookie,
just give it a second coat.
Now, applying the chocolate
is where the real precision happens,
because this is where you define
the center line of the cookie.
But if you've ever seen the ones
from the best bakeries in New York City,
they're not super even.
So don't worry about it too, too much,
because this is what's gonna differentiate your snack
and the ones that they sell
on the outside of the jerky aisle.
After two to four hours,
once the fondant has set completely,
it's time to dig in.
And it's really good,
but I have some ideas for how to improve the cookie
and make it softer, moister, cakier.
First up, I'm swapping out white sugar for brown.
Same procedure after that.
Beat everything together.
Add the two eggs.
Scrape down the sides.
Then, once it comes time
to sift together our dry ingredients,
not only am I gonna remember all of them,
I'm adding 3/4 of a teaspoon of baking powder.
My hopes here is that the baking powder
is gonna help the cookie rise a little bit more in the oven
and not give it such sharp edges
and that the brown sugar will help produce a softer,
moister, slightly darker, more evenly browned cookie.
Same deal: ice cream scoop, Silpat, 350, 15 minutes.
And it appears as though these ideas have yielded fruit.
But I also wanted to see if you could bake these
on parchment paper, sans nonstick spray,
but with an interesting side effect.
The Silpat bakes up nice and evenly,
but the parchment paper wrinkles underneath the cookie,
causing these little lines.
Of course, this doesn't matter at all
because we're covering it with frosting.
So there's some nice, absolutely useless data
to start your Tuesday off right.
Frost as usual with the fondant icing,
and this was the next day and I hadn't eaten lunch,
so I couldn't wait for the frosting to set.
So here goes nothing,
and it's just about the best black and white cookie
I've ever had.
It's most, it's soft, and it's genuinely flavorful.
But does it evoke racial harmony?
I think, for that,
we need to make a new kind of black and white cookie,
one that doesn't robotically divide the two colors,
but creates a unique snowflake
that shows how beautiful the world can be
when we work together.
Anyway, here's Jess dancing
when she didn't realize I was still filming.
(upbeat music)