- 18
Ingredients
- 12 ounces all purpose flour
- 5 1/2 ounces unsalted butter or leaf lard*
- 10 ounces sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
- 3 1/2 ounces egg whites
- 6 ounces buttermilk
- Frosting
- 24 ounces powdered sugar
- 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
- 1 ounce corn syrup
- 4 ounces whole milk, plus extra for thinning chocolate frosting
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 ounce cocoa powder
Preparation
Step 1
Preheat the oven to 350° F and have two parchment lined sheet pans at the ready.
I like tracing out circles on the parchment and piping the cookies in a spiral, to ensure they’re all the same size and thickness. The snail-shell swirl of cookie batter will smooth out as it bakes. If obsessive uniformity isn’t your thing, all you need’s a spoon.
Sift the flour and set aside.
Combine the butter or leaf lard, sugar, baking powder, soda, salt and vanilla bean scrapings and cream together until light and fluffy, about 6 minutes. Stop mixing halfway through to scrape the bowl down thoroughly.
Add the egg whites, in about three additions, while mixing continuously. Turn the mixer to low and add the flour all at once, then drizzle in the buttermilk. Mix until homogenous.
Pipe out 9 cookies per tray, or scoop the batter in 3-tablespoon portions. Two scoops from a #40 cookie scoop (1.5 Tablespoon capacity), works perfectly. After scooping, use the back of the spoon to spread each portion into a 4” circle.
Bake about eight minutes, or until the cookies have puffed and just begun to set in the center.
While the cookies cool, make up the frosting.
Sift the powdered sugar into a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a food processor. Add in the salt, corn syrup, milk and vanilla. Pulse or mix until you have a smooth icing.
If you want mathematical precision in your cookies, use a large cookie cutter to trim each into a perfect circle. If opting for this method, transfer the cut cookies to a clean sheet of parchment to keep those pesky crumbs from getting into the frosting. They’ll find a way, trust me.
Now, apologies if this violates some major B&W principle, but I can’t bring myself to frost them upside down (as seems traditional). This makes the cookie a million perfect more likely to crack in the process, and also more of a pain, so I frost them dome side up.
To do this, dab a tablespoon of vanilla icing over each cookie, using the back of your spoon to coax the icing down and over the edges. This is especially important if you cut the cookies, since the cut edges need to be sealed to prevent the cookies from drying out.
Once all of the cookies are glazed, add the cocoa powder to the frosting and mix until smooth. Add in a little extra milk, about a tablespoon, to make the frosting creamy again.
Take a small spoonful of chocolate frosting and drizzle it down the middle of the cookie, then spread it away from the center and down to the edges. If you’d like a very sharp line between black and white, lay a piece of butcher’s twine down the middle of the cookie to give yourself a guideline.
If you’re not a literalist, the chocolate works just as well splattered on to the cookie in abstract swirls and splotches.
Let the cookies sit at room temperature, uncovered, until the frosting has crusted over. Once the frosting has dried, stack the cookies in an airtight container with parchment placed between the layers. The cookies will keep for two or three days.
*I almost didn’t even mention leaf lard in the recipe, since it’s such an obscure ingredient for those outside the South, but it does something amazing in these cookies. It adds an unbelievable, almost umami-like dimension that you have to taste to understand. For everyday deliciousness, butter gets the job done nicely. I just felt like I had to tell ya in case, you know, you found some leaf lard and wanted to make cookies.