Saturday Snacks: an Epcot-inspired Black and White Cookie

It’s Saturday, and we’re back again for more snacks. I mentioned a few weeks ago that cookies and I are pretty much BFFs right now, and as such, I thought that attempting my second favorite cookie from Epcot’s 2019 Holiday Cookie Stroll was in order.

If you’re not familiar with the Holiday Cookie Stroll, allow me to bring you up to speed: you make your way around the World Showcase buying 5 specific cookies ($2.50 each), get a stamp for each cookie purchase, show your completed Cookie Stroll stamp page to a cast member at a certain Holiday Kitchen booth, and you receive a complementary completer cookie. I’m not too overly competitive, but this was a mission that I was determined to complete late one afternoon. By myself. And before the sun went down because I needed pictures for the review article. Yes, it was too much, and yes, by the time I had the completer cookie in hand, I didn’t want to eat another bite. It was a bit ridiculous. I’ll bring a friend this year.

My second favorite cookie during 2019’s Epcot International Festival of the Holidays was the Black and White Cookie from L’Chaim Holiday Kitchen. The Black and White from L’Chaim, true to the variety, had a denser, cake-like consistency, and featured a bright, yet subtle, hint of citrus. This cookie was incredibly good. And I want one now. Thus, this weekend’s Saturday Snacks was born.

I was happy to find a recipe for Black and White cookies on the DISboards’ Community Board. Just a note: we also have a thriving Disney recipe exchange on the DISboards if you’re ever looking for a Disney recipe or two.

The recipe that I found on the Community Board calls for cake flour in addition to all-purpose flour. Being that purchasing another type of flour when I already had plenty of all-purpose seemed a bit much, I searched for and found a substitute for cake flour on the internet. Basically, for every cup of all-purpose flour, you take out 2 tablespoons, and you replace them with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch. Make sure that the flour and cornstarch are throughly combined, and you’ll be good to go. Making your own cake flour created an extra step for the recipe, but in the end, I was glad to make use of what I already had.

Be warned that making these cookies will absolutely DESTROY your kitchen. No joke. You’ll have drippy icing, confectioners sugar and flour everywhere, and while it’s incredibly messy, it’s also incredibly worth it. Trust me.

Your first steps will be to cream the sugar and room temperature unsalted butter together.

After doing that, can you add your eggs, milk, vanilla extract, and lemon extract. This was my first time using lemon extract, and mannn it smelled so good.

If you’re using a stand mixer for the wet ingredients, make sure that you’re scraping down the side of the bowl throughout the process.

While the recipe calls for you to combine the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl, I used a large one. And I needed it. When you’re working with 5 cups of flour, the biggest bowl you have is definitely required.

When it comes time to add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, do what the recipe says: add the dry mixture to the wet mixture in batches. Any more than 3/4 of a cup or so at a time, and it’ll be snowing flour all over your counters.

This dough spreads, and you want them to be good sized cookies, so make sure to give them plenty of space to spread out. Also, my recommendation is to try to round out your heaping spoonfuls of dough. It’ll make for a prettier cookie. That being said, I’m not picky about what my cookie looks like as long as it tastes good. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all.

Grab the cookies out of the oven once the edges have begun to brown, and let them cool before icing.

If you don’t have a double boiler, you can place water in a pot and top it with a glass bowl. Maintain a rolling boil in the pot below, and your chocolate will melt beautifully up top. I’ve done this over the years when whipping up chocolate ganache, and it’s always worked well. A note: the recipe says to turn off the heat when your chocolate icing has formed. I did at first, but, as you might guess, it began to solidify, so I turned the low heat back on in order to keep the icing spreadable.

Be careful when you’re adding the boiling water to the confectioners sugar for the icing. Add only a little at first, and then continue to add by small amounts if needed. Divide up your icing, and add the bittersweet chocolate, and go to town frosting your cookies once they’ve cooled.

For me, spooning the icing onto the cookie and spreading it around with the back of the spoon proved to be more effective than trying to brush the icing onto the cookie as is suggested in the recipe. After the cookies are covered in icing, give the icing a chance to set up. Once that’s done, take pictures of your edible masterpieces (if you don’t have any pics, it didn’t happen, right?) and gobble them up.

To my delight, this recipe turned out beautifully. The cookies were dense, cake-like, and delicious. The icing was a bit sweeter than what was used on the cookies found at Epcot during the Holiday Cookie Stroll, and the citrus flavor wasn’t as strong, but they were incredibly good. If I make this again, I will use a bit more lemon extract.

I ran out of icing, so I popped the rest of the cookies without icing into the freezer to be completed another day.

A note: the Black and White cookie from L’Chaim was plant-based, and this recipe is not. My youngest, who is vegan, said that flaxseed and water could be used in place of the eggs, and I imagine that your favorite vegan-friendly milk and butter could stand in for the regular dairy products. Stores are carrying great vegan chocolate baking options these days, so options that would stand in for the bittersweet chocolate should be available.

So, while my attempt at re-creating the Chocolate Crinkle Cookie fell a bit short of expectations when compared to the Disney original, the Black and White cookie recipe that I found on the DISboards was a home run.

If you decide to give this recipe a try, please let me know. I’d love to be able to raise a Black and White cookie in your honor and virtually celebrate with you! Do you have a favorite Disney-inspired cookie recipe? Please share in the comments section below. Happy snacking!

Ready to give the cookies a go? The recipe is below:

BLACK-AND-WHITE COOKIES

Time: 1 hour

1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), at room temperature
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
2 1/2 cups cake flour
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/3 to 1/2 cup boiling water
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate
1 teaspoon light corn syrup

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray 2 baking sheets with nonstick spray, or line with parchment paper.
2. In large mixing bowl, combine sugar and butter. Mix by machine or hand until fluffy. Add eggs, milk and vanilla and lemon extracts, and mix until smooth.
3. In medium bowl, combine cake flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt. Stir until mixed. Add dry mixture to the wet in batches, stirring well after each addition. Using a soup spoon, place heaping spoonfuls of the dough 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake until edges begin to brown, 18 to 20 minutes. Cool completely.
4. Place confectioners’ sugar in large mixing bowl. Gradually stir in enough boiling water to the sugar to make a thick, spreadable mixture.
5. Put half the frosting in the top half of a double-boiler. Add the chocolate and corn syrup, and set over simmering water. Warm the mixture, stirring, until chocolate is melted and frosting is smooth. Turn off the heat, but leave chocolate frosting over hot water to keep it spreadable. With a brush, coat half of the top of each cookie with chocolate frosting, and the other half with white frosting. Let dry, and store in an airtight container.

Yield: 2 dozen large cookies