For bakery nostalgia, look to the black and white cookie

Native New Yorker confession: The black and white cookie was never one of my favorites.

Here I shall pause for the collective horrified gasps of my brethren and those beyond who adore this quintessential confection.

Yes, I ate them. (And yes, I enjoyed them. They’re still cookies, after all.) But more often than not, I found them to be dry.

There. I said it.

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But this year, amid my research for National Black and White Cookie Day (Sept. 14), I was vindicated by none other than Herb Glaser, whose Bavarian immigrant grandparents opened Glaser’s Bake Shop in Manhattan in 1902, which, for most of the 116 years it served the Upper East Side, an indisputable destination for black and white cookies.

”The trick is to add enough flour so the batter holds a shape,” Glaser said in a 1998 piece in The New York Times, describing best practices in recipe formulation, “but not so much that the cookie becomes dry, which is a common problem with the black-and-white,” Glaser said.

It was a gift to my regional foodie soul that echoed through time. And one that allowed me to enjoy better the commissary-crafted cookie they’re going to be giving away (one per customer, dine-in only with any purchase) at all TooJay’s locations to mark this fondant-forward holiday.

The first TooJay’s opened in 1981, and these beautifully bisected biscuits have been gracing the cases since Day One.

“It’s a quintessential part of being a New York-style deli. You can’t be that without a black and white cookie,” says chief operating officer Troy Goldman, whose own family’s origins can be traced to Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay neighborhood. “I was a fan long before my TooJay’s days, like so many people. The history of the cookie is really rich.”

In pop culture, too. Goldman himself cannot help but reference the now-iconic 1994 “Seinfeld” episode in which Jerry holds up the black and white cookie as a sweet and poignant symbol of peace. “Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate,” Seinfeld says as he and Elaine stand amid the bakery’s other customers. “And yet still, somehow, racial harmony eludes us.”

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In the years since my childhood in New York (and Goldman’s in Orlando; we are roughly the same age), black and whites have proliferated beyond indie bakery cases into mass-produced clamshells you can find everywhere from Publix to BJ’s Warehouse Club and beyond, but they’re still far friendlier on the eyes behind the glass at TooJay’s or in local shops like Charlie’s Bakery & Creamery (3213 Curry Ford Road in Orlando), which also has them on the reg. The nice part is that their stark and lovely design makes them easy to spot from a distance.

Some historians believe the black and white’s ancestry stems from a similar cookie, this one from upstate New York, called the half moon. The Wikipedia listing overlaps the two (and amusingly distinguishes the “Northeastern United States and Florida” as the best places to find the black and white). Though some theories have the cookie coming here via German bakers, others suggest it was the other way around.

“After World War II, American soldiers brought these cookies back to Germany,” Goldman says, “and that’s when they really became ‘a thing.'” The fact that black and whites are called “Amerikaners” in Deutschland supports this. “There’s a lot of folklore involved,” he notes.

At TooJay’s, each round of shortbread contains notes of almond, vanilla and lemon. That’s standard, but the iconic design gets multiple makeovers throughout the year, with bright colors marking holidays including Thanksgiving, Halloween, Hanukkah, Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, the Fourth of July and Valentine’s Day.

“We make over one and a quarter million of these cookies each year,” says Goldman, all of which come from TooJay’s commissary bakery in West Palm Beach and all of which, incredibly, are iced by bakers Sucely Lopez and Julissa Puac.

“When the cookies come out of the oven and set on sheet pans, Julissa has the chocolate, and Sucely has the vanilla, and they stand side by side and hand-paint each of the cookies.”

Back in the day, the jumbo-sized cookie (Seinfeld models one in the memorable scene) was the norm. These days, most of the mass-produced varieties come in a more sensible two-bite size, though customers at TooJay’s will see larger options in the case from time to time. The standard-sized sweets can be purchased as a small dessert (three cookies for $3.49), by the box (nine for $4.99) or at $10.98 per pound at the counter.

For the brand, says Goldman, the black and white is as important to the menu as pastrami, pickles or matzoh ball soup.

“If you were to close your eyes and paint a picture of what it means to be an authentic, New York-style deli, it would include all those things, and it would certainly include black and white cookies, which has always led the charge in the bakery department.”

Simple and sweet, the black and white is vintage vibes on a plate, a leader with meaningful ties both sentimental and potentially, “Seinfeld” fans might argue, sociological. Either way, on Sept. 14, you can take a page from the series and “Look to the cookie.”

Find me on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie . Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com , For more foodie fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group .