Half-Moon Cookies
These are also called "black-and-whites" (as seen on a memorable episode of Seinfeld). One of my earliest memories is stopping at a local bakery after church with my father and buying a dozen of these to take home for a special Sunday dessert. They would pack them in a white carboard box and quickly tie it - first one way, and then the other - with white string. I stopped in there a few years ago to find that almost nothing had changed - same location, same great cookies, tied up in a white carboard box with string!
Makes 2 dozen cookies
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
4 large eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp lemon extract
2 1/2 cups cake flour
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
Frosting:
4 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar
1/3 to 1/2 cup boiling water
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate
1 tsp salad oil
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter 2 baking sheets and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, combine the sugar and butter and mix by machine or hand until fluffy. Add the eggs, milk, and vanilla and lemon extracts and mix until smooth.
In a medium bowl, combine the flours, baking powder, and salt and stir until mixed. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in batches, stirring well to combine.
Using a soup spoon, drop spoonfuls of the dough 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake until the edges begin to brown, 20 to 30 minutes. Allow to cool completely.
To make frosting, place the confectioners sugar in a large bowl. Gradually add enough of the boiling water to the sugar, stirring constantly, until mixture is thick and spreadable. Remove half of the frosting to the top half of a double boiler set over simmering water and add the chocolate. Warm the mixture, stirring, until the chocolate is melted and the frosting is smooth. Remove from the heat. Spread half the cookie with chocolate frosting and the other half with white frosting. Great with an ice-cold glass of milk!
P.S. We each had our special way of eating these - I ate the entire chocolate side before digging into the white (better, in my opinion) side! My sister and I were talking about them one day, long after we had grown up and she said she did the opposite - she gobbled down the white side so she could let the taste of the chocolate linger on her tastebuds. If only we had known, we could've traded halves!
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