The Cake Doctor

Tag Archives: Biscuits

Black and white cookies for the indecisive

2 Nov

Dear Cake Doctor

My girlfriend is getting increasingly frustrated with my inability to make decisions. She can make a choice in two seconds flat, while I take hours deliberating over what to do. Is there a cake that might help me make up my mind?

Hot & Cold

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Dear Hot & Cold

While cake’s probably not going to show you which option’s the right one, it is an area where you don’t need necessarily need to choose.

Your prescription’s one that should provide some relief from the burden of having to make decisions. Black and white cookies are the perfect compromise between a plainly-iced biscuit and a chocolate one. The cookie itself is pillowy on the inside, crispy on the outside, while the top is coated with the perfect balance of black and white icing.

And next time your girlfriend’s trying to get you to make a choice between competing options, wave one of these under her nose. You might just win yourself a little more time to deliberate.

Good luck!

Love,

The Cake Doctor x

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Complaint: indecisiveness

Prescription: black and white cookies (inspired by Smitten Kitchen’s black and white cookies)

For the cookies

310g plain flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

175ml milk

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon lemon extract

110g unsalted butter at room temperature (or, fridge-cold, zapped in the microwave for 30 seconds)

190g caster sugar

2 eggs at room temperature

For the icing

250g icing sugar

100ml water

40 grams dark chocolate

1 teaspoon golden syrup

Method

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celcius and line a large oven tray with baking paper.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt in to a medium bowl and set aside.

Measure out the milk, then drop in the vanilla and lemon extracts and set aside.

Place the butter and sugar in a large bowl, and beat with a freestanding electric mixer, a handheld electric whisk, or just a wooden spoon until increased slightly in volume and paled a little in colour.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Ideally, the mixture should be smooth, however small lumps may form if your eggs are fridge-cold and thus a different temperature to the butter and sugar mixture. Don’t panic – just add a tablespoonful of your sifted flour to the liquid mixture to smooth it out.

Now, remove the bowl from the mixer, or set aside the handheld whisk or wooden spoon.

Tip about a third of the flour mix and about a third of the milk mix into the butter, sugar and egg mixture. Mix together gently, then repeat twice so that all of the ingredients are eventually combined. Don’t mix too enthusiastically or the proteins in the flour will toughen your batter.

Using a tablespoon, drop heaped spoonfuls of the combined mixture onto the prepared baking tray, leaving space between each to spread. Try to keep your dollops as circular as possible!

Place in the oven for 18 minutes, or until the cookies look set and are golden around the edges.

Turn the cookies out on to a baking tray to cool completely.

Then, turn the cookies upside down and prepare your icing.

Sift the icing sugar into a medium bowl and drizzle in the water until your icing has a thick, but spreadable consistency.

Spread the white icing over half of each your cookies (remember you turned them upside down and are icing the base of each!).

Then, place the bowl of remaining icing over a saucepan with a little water in the base, and warm over a medium heat. Make sure the base of the bowl doesn’t touch the simmering water.

Now, add the chocolate and golden syrup.

Stir in until smooth.

Ice the other half of each cookie with the chocolate icing. If your icing starts to thicken as you work, stir in a drizzle of hot water to make it smooth and spreadable again.