Black and White Cookie Cake is light, spongy yellow cake with chocolate & vanilla icing in every slice. It's a beloved cookie made into cake!
So, my daughter’s husband’s brother was coming to visit for his birthday, and he wanted a cake. (That sounds like the start of a joke!)
Was it a chocolate raspberry cake with chocolate frosting (my cake of choice)?
Too pedestrian.
White cake with pink strawberry frosting and rainbow sprinkles? For a 30-year old man, perhaps not.
No, he wanted a cookie…a Black and White cookie…I mean a Black and White Cookie Cake.
So essentially, this cookie walks into a cake…
(Wait…what?)
Jump to:
- What is a Black and White cookie?
- Turn a Black and White Cookie into cake
- Substitutions for buttermilk
- How to make a Black & White Cookie Cake
- Questions asked and answered
- Turning a cookie into a cake works
- A Black and White Birthday Cake
- Recipes for cakes converted from something else
- Recipe
- Comments
What is a Black and White cookie?
For the uninitiated (ok…me), Black and White cookies are those you see in bakeries and corner delis that have black and white icing (one on each side) on a soft, cake-like cookie.
Usually jumbo-sized, these cookies have a slight lemony flavor to balance out the sweetness of the icings.
So why a Black and White Cookie Cake?
When they were kids, my Son-in-Law and his brother would have Black and White Cookies on the train when returning from visiting their dad at work in New York City.
Good times, good memories.
For the record, these aren’t my go-to cookies when I head into a bakery (give me something in the rugelach family, please). But I take requests.
Turn a Black and White Cookie into cake
What is a Black and White Cake then? Is it vanilla cake and chocolate cake?
No, it's all about the icings.
The idea is to make a light, spongy yellow cake (the "cookie" part) and frost it with chocolate icing on the one side and vanilla icing on the other. The filling would have the opposite icings.
What you want is for every slice to have chocolate and vanilla icing in it.
Apparently, turning this iconic cookie into a full-blown recipe for Black and White Cake is a thing. I adapted Take a Megabite's Black & White Cookie Cake recipe for my purposes.
Substitutions for buttermilk
The ingredients for a Black & White Cake recipe are fairly common. like flour, butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda, and buttermilk. But, why buttermilk?
The purpose of buttermilk in a cake is to give an acid for the baking soda to react with, thus lifting the cake. However, I generally don't have it at hand, so I use some great buttermilk substitutes.
For 1 cup of buttermilk in a recipe:
- Use ½ cup each water and sour cream (or plain Greek yogurt). Stir well.
- For 1 cup of milk, remove 1 teaspoon and replace it with 1 teaspoon lemon juice or white vinegar. Let sit for 5 minutes before using.
- Use 1 cup of water and 2 tablespoons sweet buttermilk powder. This is my method of choice, and what I have pictured below.
On a separate note, adding espresso powder to the chocolate icing deepens the chocolate flavor. It's optional, but totally worth it!
How to make a Black & White Cookie Cake
As I mentioned before, you're not making a chocolate and vanilla layer cake. That simplifies things considerably.
This cake comes together in two parts: make the cake, then make the icings.
Part 1: Make the cake layers
Sift the flour, buttermilk powder (if using), baking powder, and salt, then cream the butter & sugar and add the eggs, one at a time.
The trick to a light cake is to not to overdo it when blending the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Alternating the buttermilk with the flour mixture is also important as it keeps the batter moist as the flour is mixed in.
Divide the batter evenly between the two round cake pans, and smooth the top for even baking.
Part 2: Make the two icings
The white icing has a lemon flavor to offset its sweetness. Adjust the amount of lemon juice to your liking.
The chocolate icing is so fudgy and delicious, it's hard to just grab a spoon and "forget" to frost the cake!
The idea is to frost the bottom layer half & half with the two icing, then frost the top layer with the opposite flavors. That way you get both white and chocolate icing in every piece.
Questions asked and answered
Here are some questions that you might have...
Have you ever wondered how to level a cake without a knife? Well, when a cake layer bakes, it develops a dome on top. If you want to stack those layers, you have to level the cake by cutting off the dome, otherwise the layered cake sags. The doming happens because the outside of the cake bakes and sets faster than the inside, so the middle has more time to rise. I've found that Bake-Even Strips solve this problem by insulating the outside of the cake, thus allowing the cake to bake evenly. End result…level cakes! (And there was much rejoicing)
Yes! Just divide all the ingredients in half and use two 6-inch round cake pans. (Hint...that's what's pictured here and in the video.)
Turning a cookie into a cake works
The cake was light and springy, and the icings were sweet without being cloying.
It's such a fun cake, and so different than the usual layer cake!
A Black and White Birthday Cake
Originally written to yield a 6-inch cake, I adapted the recipe for a full-sized Black and White Cookie Cake recipe and use two 9-inch round cake pans.
When you're serving two over-6-foot-tall men (and three other shorter people), you want to be sure to have enough!
Since I didn’t have much experience with how Black and White cookies are supposed to taste, I was eager to see if the birthday boy approved. The results were big smiles and lots of “yummm”-s.
Black and White Cake (like Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake) may be just the thing to serve a birthday boy (or girl) who has a hankering to eat a childhood favorite cookie as a cake.
A 6-inch version of the cake (pictured here) is perfect for a smaller gathering, or maybe, shorter people?
Whichever size you choose, you will not be disappointed in this cake conversion.
After all, those in the know love it!
Slainté! L’chaim! Cheers!
Tammy
Recipes for cakes converted from something else
Turn a cookie into a cake. Or cake into cake pops. Or even make a checkerboard cake. Try these fun ideas for different ways to have cake!
Recipe
Black and White Cookie Cake
Ingredients
For the cake
- 2¾ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp kosher salt
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 4 large eggs, at room temperature
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup buttermilk, see Recipe Notes
For the icing
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 2 Tbsp light corn syrup
- 1 to 2 Tbsp lemon juice, adjust to taste, see Recipe Notes
- ½ tsp pure vanilla extract, add more to taste
- 4 to 8 tsp water
- 4 Tbsp cocoa powder
- ½ tsp espresso powder, optional, see Recipe Notes
Instructions
- Line the bottom of two 9-inch round cake pans with buttered parchment paper. Position rack in the middle of oven and preheat to 350°F.
- Soak the Bake-Even Strips in cold water for 5 minutes, then rap around the outside of the cake pans.
- For the cake: Stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl, mixing well.
- Place the sugar and butter in a large bowl and beat on medium speed for about 5 minutes, or until very soft and light. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, then beat in vanilla.
- Reduce the speed to low and beat in ⅓ of the flour mixture, then ½ the buttermilk (or sour cream/water mixture), stopping and scraping down the bowl and beater after each addition. Beat in another third of the flour, then the remaining buttermilk, stopping and scraping again. Finally, beat in the remaining flour mixture.
- Scrape the bowl well with a large rubber spatula.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pans and smooth the tops.
- Bake the layers for about 30 to 35 minutes, until they are firm and a toothpick inserted in the center emerges clean. Cool the layers in the pans on racks for 5 minutes, then unmold onto racks to finish cooling before icing.
- Trim the top of each cake layer to flatten, if needed. You won't need to trim them if you follow my advice about the Bake-Even Strips...I'm not kidding, they really work!
- For the icing: Stir together powdered sugar, corn syrup, lemon juice, vanilla, and 1 tablespoon water in a small bowl until smooth.
- Transfer half of icing to another bowl and stir in cocoa powder and espresso powder (if using), adding more water, ½ teaspoon at a time, to thin to same consistency as white icing.
- Finish the cake: Ice the bottom layer half white and half black. Place the top layer on top using cake lifters.
- Frost the opposite sides of the top layer white and black so you’ll get both black & white icing in every bite. Serve & enjoy!
Video
Notes
- Use ½ cup each water and sour cream (or plain Greek yogurt). Stir well.
- For 1 cup of milk, remove 1 teaspoon and replace it with 1 teaspoon lemon juice or white vinegar. Let sit for 5 minutes before using.
- Use 1 cup of water and 2 tablespoons sweet buttermilk powder. This is my method of choice, and what I use in the video. Just whisk the buttermilk powder in with the flour mixture.
