Black and white cookie

Black-and-white cookies,half-and-half cookies, andhalf-moon cookiesare similar roundcookiesiced or frosted in two colors, with one halfvanillaand the otherchocolate. They are found in theNortheastern United StatesandFlorida. Black-and-white cookies are flat, have fondant or sometimesroyal icingon a dense cake base, and are common in theNew York metropolitan area.Half-moon cookies are slightly dome-shaped (convex), havefrostingon a fluffy angel cake base, and are common inCentral New YorkandBoston, Massachusetts.
TheAmerikaneris a similar cookie inGerman baking.
Designs with contrasting light and dark parts were popular at the beginning of the 20th century, including on baked goods and desserts. Cookies with cake bases also became popular at the time. Culinary historian Stephen Schmidt sees black-and-whites and half-moons as straightforward convergences of the two trends, and compares them toteacakesserved in theSouthern United States.
The black-and-white cookie is commonly traced to Glaser's Bake Shop in theYorkvilleneighborhood ofManhattan, founded in 1902 byBavarianimmigrants.The black-and-white cookie was among the original recipes used by Glaser's Bake Shop.
By thepost-war period, black-and-white cookies had become part ofAmericanAshkenazi Jewishculinary repertoire, deeply rooted in theJewish communities of New York Cityand elsewhere around the United States.The cookies are a fixture at many Metro New York Jewish bakeries, including Moishe's Bake Shopand William Greenberg's Desserts.
InItalian-American bakeriesin New York City, a thin layer of apricot jam is sometimes present below the fondant.
Half-moon cookies can be traced to Hemstrought's Bakery inUtica, New York, who started baking half-moons around 1925.Half moons are still very popular in Utica,and local media often debates which bakery makes the best half-moons.
Half-moons are often frosted higher on one side than the other. InBoston, sometimes the domed side is frosted rather than the flat side.
TheAmerikaneris often decorated like the black and white cookie, but can be frosted entirely in vanilla instead.The origin and name ofAmerikanerin Germany is unclear, as is their possible relationship to black-and-white cookies. It is sometimes claimed that the cookie was introduced or reintroduced by American GIs serving atUS military bases in Germanyduring the 1950s.Another theory proposes a corruption of the wordAmmoniumhydrogencarbonat(ammonium bicarbonate, aleavening agent).In the formerEast Germany, due toanti-Americanism, the nameAmmonplätzchen(Ammonia cookies) was used.
In the 1994Seinfeldepisode "The Dinner Party",Jerryeats a black-and-white cookie while waiting in a New York City bakery with Elaine. He uses the cookie as a metaphor for racial harmony, saying the chocolate and vanilla represent black and white people living together. If the colors mix together well on a cookie, Jerry argues, so can different races in society, suggesting the answer to poor race relations is to "Look to the cookie!"While campaigning in the2008 United States presidential electionat a deli inHollywood, Florida,Barack Obamabought two black-and-white cookies and said about them, "it's a unity cookie."In a 2015 op-ed inTabletmagazine,African-AmericanRabbiShais Rishonargued that the cookie, with its cleanly separated black and white sides, better representedracial segregation.