Schwarz-Weiß-Gebäck

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Rolling pin
• •Baking paper
• •Sharp chef's knife
• •Ruler
• •Two baking sheets
• •Wire cooling rack
• •Metal cookie tin

Instructions

1. 1

   Make pale dough

   Mix the flour, icing sugar, and salt in a bowl, then rub in the cold butter until the mixture looks like fine crumbs. Cold butter coats the flour before it melts, so the Mürbeteig, short pastry, bakes tender instead of tough. Add the egg yolk, milk, vanilla, and lemon zest if using, and press the dough together without kneading it smooth like bread.

2. 2

   Make cocoa dough

   Divide the dough in half. Knead the cocoa powder into one half with one or two teaspoons of milk only if it cracks, because cocoa drinks moisture and a dry dark dough will split when you stack it. Leave the pale half plain. Flatten both into rectangles, wrap them, and chill for 45 minutes so the butter firms and the flour hydrates.

3. 3

   Roll even slabs

   Roll each dough between baking paper into a rectangle about 1cm thick. Measure the thickness, don't admire it from across the table. The checkerboard only lines up if the pale and dark slabs are the same height, and uneven dough gives you leaning squares no matter how carefully you slice.

4. 4

   Cut and stack

   Trim the rectangles clean, then cut each into long strips about 1cm wide. Brush the sides lightly with egg white and stack three strips per row, alternating pale and dark, then build three rows so the colours cross into a checkerboard. Use only a thin film of egg white; too much makes the layers slide, and the pattern loses its edges.

5. 5

   Chill the log

   Press the log gently into a straight block, wrap it tight, and chill for at least 1 hour, longer if the kitchen is warm. This is the step that decides the cookie. A firm log lets the knife cut through clean butter and flour; a soft log smears cocoa into vanilla and gives you a brown argument.

6. 6

   Slice cleanly

   Heat the oven to 180C, or 160C fan, and line two baking sheets. Slice the cold log into 5mm cookies with a sharp knife, wiping the blade if cocoa builds up. Cut straight down, not sawing back and forth, because sawing drags the dark dough across the pale face.

7. 7

   Bake pale

   Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are set and only faintly golden. Runter mit der Temperatur if they brown too fast; the point is a clean black-and-white pattern, not a toasted biscuit. Let them firm on the tray for 5 minutes, then move them to a rack.

8. 8

   Store in tins

   Cool the cookies completely before they go into a tin, because trapped warmth softens the bite and dulls the pattern. Layer them with baking paper and keep them in a metal Plätzchendose, a cookie tin, for up to three weeks. The trimmings bake beside the neat pieces as marbled scraps. Weggeworfen wird nichts.

Chef Tips

• •Use Dutch-process or good unsweetened cocoa, not drinking chocolate. Drinking chocolate brings sugar and starch you didn't ask for, and the dark dough turns weak.
• •If the dough cracks while shaping, let it sit five minutes before pressing it again. Cracking means too cold; smearing means too warm. The right dough bends a little and still holds an edge.
• •Trim the block with a ruler and a sharp knife. This isn't fussiness. Straight sides give you straight checkerboards, and crooked logs make crooked cookies.
• •Bake one test tray first. If the cookies spread, the log was too warm or the butter too soft; chill the next sliced tray for 10 minutes before baking.

Advance Preparation

• •The shaped checkerboard log can be refrigerated for 2 days before slicing; wrap it tightly so it doesn't dry at the edges.
• •The log can be frozen for up to 2 months. Slice from firm but not rock-hard, because a frozen log cracks before the knife gets through it.
• •Baked cookies keep well for 2 to 3 weeks in a metal tin with baking paper between layers, which is why they belong to Advent batch baking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 16g)