Half Moon Cookies Recipe
Black and White Cookies, Famous Seinfeld Cookies
The best black and white cookie recipe boasts a mocha and white icing topping.
Actually small yellow cakes frosted with half mocha and half vanilla icing, these cookies are a common staple of bakeries in New York City and Upstate New York.
Denizens of New York City, including Jerry Seinfeld's character in an episode of his famous television show, call them “black and white cookies.” In Upstate New York, including the cookie’s purported birthplace of Utica, dessert fans named them “half moon cookies.” Whatever you call them, these big cake-like cookies are melt-in-your-mouth good.
Half-Moon (or Black and White) Cookie Recipe:
- 1 cup buttermilk or sour milk (mix 1 tablespoon white vinegar with milk and set aside for 5 minutes)
- 1-½ cups sugar
- ¾-cup shortening
- 2 eggs
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 3 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda (to be mixed in milk)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions for Cookie Dough:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Beat sugar and shortening in a large bowl until creamy.
- Add eggs one at a time and beat well.
- Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Mix the baking soda with buttermilk or sour milk.
- Add the flour mixture to the sugar and shortening, alternating with the milk mixture.
- Add vanilla.
- Place 2 rounded tablespoons of batter per cookie on ungreased cookie sheets. (Note: This batter will look more like cake batter than stiff cookie batter.)
- Bake for 10 minutes or until cookies spring back when touched
- Cool completely on a rack.
Directions for Icing:
Mocha Icing:
- 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 6 tablespoons strong coffee
- 6 tablespoons cocoa
- 4 tablespoons melted butter
- 1 tsp. vanilla
Combine all ingredients in a mixer and beat until smooth.
White Icing:
Combine in a mixing bowl and beat until creamy:
- 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
- 6 tablespoons softened butter
Add and beat until smooth:
- 3 to 5 tablespoons milk
- 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
- Dash of salt.
Now comes the fun part. Once the cookies are cooled, turn them upside down and frost the flat bottom of the cookie—half with the chocolate icing and half with the vanilla icing. The surface of the cookie may be a bit crumbly, so swipe a knife or hand over the cookie to knock of loose crumbs before frosting.
For a change of pace, add food coloring to the white icing to match a holiday theme. Make chocolate and green half moon cookies for St. Patrick’s Day, chocolate and red for Valentine’s Day, or chocolate and pastel colors for Easter.
Seinfeld connection: In an episode of called "The Dinner Party," Jerry urges Elaine to "look to the cookie" while he enjoys a black and white cookie and muses on the perfect mingling of vanilla and chocolate.
"Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate," Seinfeld observes. "And yet somehow racial harmony eludes us."
