The Gluten Free Black & White Cookie

Recently, mom mentioned wanting a black & white cookie. Like, the NYC Black & White Cookie. We live in Gadsden, AL, so that poses a bit of a problem. It's not that black & white cookies don't exist here, they are just harder to come by in these parts. I used to make them myself, but that was over nine years ago, when I wasn't gluten free. Life was easier then, in more ways than one. But, I recently came into two bags of gluten free baking flour (gifted from a friend whose daughter had obtained it mistakenly, and NOT being a gluten free girl, was at a loss as to what to do with it), and had all of the other ingredients.

One of my favorite things to do when I lived in upstate New York was to walk up to the corner store on a Sunday morning, pick up a black & white cookie, a cup of black coffee, and a copy of the Sunday NY Times...

It has taken me two nights and two recipes to perfect a suitable gluten free version of this sacred cookie. For the most amazing gluten free cake-like consistency, I used the cookie batter ingredients and instructions at Mom Loves Baking. For the glossy icing, I used the icing ingredients (I added a half teaspoon of almond extract to the white batch when making) and directions at Smitten Kitchen. The gluten free cookie from Mom Loves Baking does not taste gluten free AT ALL. If I had not made these myself to know they were safe, I would be very skeptical of their GF status. Eric has willingly served as in-home quality control taste tester. He has approved twice. Mom will be the final judge tonight.

Lise's post from Mom Loves Baking referenced the unforgettable Seinfeld episode that featured the black & white cookie where Jerry famously says, "You see, Elaine, the key to eating a black and white cookie is that you wanna get some black and some white in each bite. Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate. And yet still somehow racial harmony eludes us. If people would only look to the cookie, all our problems would be solved."

The ones that got away.

My favorite jeans were a pair of J. Crews that I purchased out of duress one spring visit to Ithaca, NY.  The occasion for the visit was to send off an old friend as he prepared to leave Ithaca, his schooling at Cornell complete.  I flew up from Alabama with a southern wardrobe and was greeted with the type of Upstate NY weather that I knew I should have expected, having lived in the area for a time a few years earlier.  I had nothing but the sleeveless and cropped shirts and pants that I was accustomed to wearing in the late spring south, nothing warmer than the one hoodie I had packed as an afterthought.  I was doomed to freeze in that town I loved, a town that was reported to have had snow on Mother’s Day in May of 1996.

So, with my Ithaca chum Donna, she of infinite wisdom of best places to shop ANYWHERE, we headed to The Commons to try our luck at Trader K’s.  And it is there that I found THE JEANS.  They were soft, gently weathered boot-cut and long, too long for my petite legs.  But I tried them on and, despite the length, found they were made for me.  So I bought them and, with hems rolled up, wore them out of the store and into the cold drizzling rain of our long walk to our friend’s apartment.  Upon walking in the door, I asked for scissors and promptly cut the excess fabric of the hems and from that day forth wore THE JEANS frayed for the rest of our years together, which were many, until I accidentally sent them in a stack of unwanted garments to a thrift store in Denver.  Oh, the heartbreak of realizing my mistake.  Oh, my futile attempts to track them down…

No other jeans have fit the same as those jeans. 

We Share the Same Sky by Elizabeth Mozley McGrady

We Share the Same Sky is the account of author Elizabeth Mozley McGrady’s 2007 pilgrimage to New York City; a pilgrimage that was of particular significance to her spirit, a journey to right a life that was no longer her own.

Interspersed with the history of both McGrady’s beloved home state of Alabama and her equally cherished yet temporarily adopted home of New York City, We Share the Same Sky would easily serve as a guide book to be carried in the worn backpack of a literary and gastronomic tourist of either place.  There is much in this book to marinate over, be it the detailed accounts of delectable meals in celebrated (and not so celebrated) New York restaurants or at her Grandmother Libby’s table, the descriptions of breathtaking architecture and scenery, the references to great literary works, or the reflections of the “inner consciousness” that cautions, “You are not at peace because you are not as you should be.”

Through McGrady’s journey, we recognize how our sense of place connects us to others, to our surroundings, and even to ourselves.   We are reminded that no matter where we travel, simple things connect us all, be they food, religion, family, history.

McGrady’s memoir is penned with intense introspection balanced by self-deprecating humor. It is an excellent read.  She will be at the GPL Local Author Day on May 17, 10AM-3PM.  I will be purchasing my own copy of her book then, as the copy I’ve been reading belongs to the library…

Author Elizabeth Mozley McGrady and I have crossed paths before.  We attended the same high school in Etowah County over twenty-six years ago, she being two grades ahead of me and friends with my older sister, making her a celestial being to us underclass mortals.  I knew her then as Beth Mozley.  She and I have, at times, figuratively and literally walked in each other’s footsteps since then.  We were recently brought together face-to-face for the first time in so many long years through my dear friend Dan Donaghy, who was visiting Gadsden from Connecticut again as our GPL writer in residence for a series of poetry writing workshops and speaking engagements.  Dan and I are chums from the days of Ithaca, NY.  Beth and her husband Travis, who currently live close to Gadsden, but not within spitting distance, drove in on a rather dreary night to hear Dan’s reading at the Back Forty Beer Co.  And there, the pieces fell into place.  At the end of the evening, I could not help but reflect on the rather serendipitous series of circumstances that brought everyone together at that place, at that particular time.  But I tend to do that sort of thing often.

The Selling Point

I have found myself missing a very special New York delicacy recently, the black and white cookie. Back in the late 90’s when I would visit Dewitt Place 4 in Ithaca, I would walk up the hill to the wonderful neighborhood bakery and pick one up, then head back down the hill, stopping at the corner shop to buy a Stewart's Orange Cream Soda (in those days I could drink sugar on top of eating sugar) and the day would be complete. All the strenuous walking about would cancel out the double dose of sugar that I consumed, so I never suffered for the decadence.

A couple of years later, when I moved to Ithaca and lived a little further out (again, downhill of everything, this time down Gun Hill, in the Fall Creek area with the fabulous Fall Creek House Theatre which was where I first saw the film Trainspotting and began using the word scatological on a regular basis), I would still walk to get my black and white cookie. I just had to walk farther, to The Commons, and Ithaca Bakery. The walk was often a cold one, and it was then that I began to drink either hot tea or black coffee with my black and white cookie. I’d sit in the bakery, trying to look out of the steamed-up windows at all the bundled-up people. When I was finished, I’d walk down The Commons, studded with planets from the Sagan Planet Walk, to my favorite bookstore Autumn Leaves (workplace of the most helpful, most non-deodorant-wearing bookseller in history, whose body odor was especially keen in the warm bookstore on a cold day…well, for that matter, on any day that he worked) to pick up a used book or two before making my trek back up the hill. Depending upon my route home, I would either go the long way, and walk by Wee Stinky (a little creek that ran through campus and was given its name for all the female students who used to urinate in its stream), or walk by an old cemetery that was the final resting place of some of the greats of Cornell University (I believe that Ezra was buried there). Sometimes I would go further out of my way to the cemetery up above our apartment, the one that was the final resting place of Carl Sagan himself (Dr. Sagan was a professor at Cornell). I was particularly fond of that cemetery because it had the best view in town. If you stood at the very top, you could look out upon Cayuga Lake and, depending upon what time of the year it was, dream of the memory of warm weather. I’m fairly certain that if one were to visit the cemetery in the evening, the view of the night sky would be breathtaking. I suppose that might have been a selling point for Carl.

Post Script: I did not take the picture above. It came from http://www.foodman.org/ithaca.html