Small(er) Batch Black & White Cookies
plus tips for freezing unbaked cookies & citrus zest
I was allergic to chocolate until my teen years. Yes, in case that wasn’t clear, I went through a good chunk of my childhood without eating chocolate. Every year the milk chocolate bunny in my sister’s Easter basket would look smugly at the sad white chocolate bunny sitting in mine. That white chocolate bunny knew it didn’t stand a chance.
My current self would chop that bunny into bits and use it to make frosting, cake or scones but what did I know back then? For years, I felt guilty to throw it away, so I’d store it in a box with toys and trinkets. Sometime before the next Easter rolled around, I’d toss the moldy, usually slightly melted bunny from wherever I’d stored the box, into the trash, awaiting the next white chocolate bunny’s doomed arrival.
Somewhere around highschool either the hives I’d get from eating chocolate dissipated, or I just stopped caring. I don’t remember which it was, and thankfully, don’t get them anymore—for the most part. I had a lot of odd allergies as a kid and went to the doctor for shots twice a week, so I think some may have lingered but my parents stopped taking me to the doctor (most doctors, in fact, because my mother eventually stopped believing in them).
Why does my chocolate allergy matter now? Well, I share this to give context for what I’m about to write next—the vanilla icing is my favorite part of a black & white cookie. Maybe it’s all those early developmental years where I never got to eat the chocolate part of the cookie growing up? My sister always got the chocolate and I got the vanilla.
Whenever Mikey and I shared a black & white cookie, I gladly gave him the chocolate part because it was no big deal to me. Now, this isn’t to say I toss the chocolate part of my cookie when eating them alone. Left to my own devices I’ll gladly eat the whole cookie but I tend to start with the chocolate first, leaving me with the vanilla to enjoy in my last bites.
I’ve shared my recipe for black & white cookies in the past but it makes a lot of cookies, and now that it’s just Virginia and I at home, we don’t need 18 cookies. Truthfully, we don’t even need the eight cookies this smaller batch recipe makes, so that’s why I’ve included my tips for freezing the unbaked cookies to enjoy at a later date. Matthew is on his way to North Carolina for work, so I’ve frozen a couple of these to bake the next time we see each other in a few weeks.
Hope the week has been a gentle one, and there’ve been some bright spots in what is always the longest month of the year.—xo, j.