Chateau Gateau

Roopa

I have been slightly enamored with these cookies for years, due to my love of Seinfeld. Given that I live in Canada though, I didn’t actually eat one until this past May, when I went to New York. I thoroughly enjoyed that they are not so much cookies as they are small cakes. I didn’t find the icing overly amazing, but the cookie itself was pretty fabulous. I sort of jumbled a few recipes together and made a few changes for this recipe. They taste good and baked well, but they didn’t get as round and flat a shape as is probably ideal. I got the base of the recipe from Baked Explorations – who better to make a black and white cookie than the boys from BakedNYC – but changed things around quite a bit. I had some issues with the icing, but I’ll get to that later.

NYC BLACK AND WHITE COOKIES (made 9 cookies)

• ¼ cup + 3 tbsp. milk 
• ½ tsp. apple cider vinegar
• 1-½ cups + 1 tbsp. all purpose flour
• 2 tbsp. corn starch
• ¼ tsp. baking soda
• ½ tsp. baking powder
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 100 g unsalted butter, softened
• ½ cup + 2 tbsp. granulated sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla 
• 1/8 tsp. lemon extract

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line cookie sheet with parchment paper.
2. Stir together milk and apple cider vinegar, and set aside.
3. Sift together flour, corn starch, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Mix well, and set aside.
4. Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add flour mixture to butter mixture in three parts, alternating with milk. Start and end with flour mixture.
5. Add in vanilla and lemon extract, and mix briefly.
6. Use an ice cream scoop and drop dough onto cookie sheet. I fit 6 on mine.
7. Bake for 16 – 20 minutes, rotating cookie sheet halfway through. The edges should start to brown, and a toothpick should come out clean. 

ICING

• 1.5 cups icing sugar
• 4 tbsp. whole milk
• 1 tbsp. butter, melted
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 tbsp. cocoa powder

DIRECTIONS

1. Whisk together the icing sugar, milk, butter, and vanilla. Make sure the butter is fully melted. 
2. Ice half of each cookie. You can use a piping bag (I found the icing too liquidy) or just spoon it on. I found the best way was to get a solid drip going from the spoon, and drape it onto the cookie to get a straight line. 
3. Mix in the cocoa powder (and water as needed) and ice the other half of each cookie when they are dry. 

Just out of the oven!

NOTES: 

• The original recipe called for 1-½ tbsp. of heavy cream, so I used butter instead. 
• My vanilla is brown, so my icing wasn’t actually white. Next time, I think I’ll use almond extract instead, because it’s clear, and I think the taste would work well. 
• You should use lemon zest in the cookies if you have it.
• The dough was super sticky.
• I only have one cookie sheet, and I used an ice pack to cool it down between bakes. Worked fabulously! I got it back to room temperature in about a minute. 
• You can reuse the parchment paper. 

The cookies themselves were not the roundest, and were maybe a little more dome-like than they needed to be. I think I’ll try a bit more liquid in the batter next time, and see if they spread out a bit more. I was not a fan of the icing. I think I’d use way less liquid next time, as well as almond extract instead of vanilla. I may also try using chocolate chips instead of cocoa powder and see how that works out. I would like a slightly more opaque chocolate if possible, and really don’t want to have to do multiple layers. 

Overall, a decent first attempt, I think!