![black and white cookie black and white cookie](https://assets.marthastewart.com/styles/wmax-300/d41/ml0704coma1_0704_mini_black_white_cookies/ml0704coma1_0704_mini_black_white_cookies_hd.jpg)
In the early 20th century, the cookie first reportedly appeared in Utica, New York at Hemstrought’s Bakery and were called “half moons.” Back and forth about its German origins and then embrace by New York City and Jewish culture still happens, but Schmidt is not necessarily buying this well-worn origin story. It was a new idea at the turn of the century to have this cake-like cookie with chocolate fondant on one side and vanilla fondant on the other. Until this time in history, cookies were thin and crisp, not big, fat dropcakes. It was very much of a piece with the times.” It was something people were doing with cake, so it’s not at all surprising someone thought to transfer this to the icing of a cookie. There were all kinds of cakes that had dark and light layers, cakes with red and light layers and even red, light, and dark layers. “The black and white thing: That was a very popular conceit right around that time. “The cookie was keying into a popular kind of cookie at that time,” Stephen Schmidt, member of the Experts Bureau of the Culinary Historians of New York (CHNY) who also runs a food database called Manuscript Cookbooks Survey, told MUNCHIES. It’s around this time that soft, large, cake-like cookies were also beginning to appear, including the black and white. At the end of the 19th century, bakeries were likely looking to cash in on the latest dessert fad: Matching dark and light elements in one dessert, like chocolate frosting layers in a vanilla cake.
![black and white cookie black and white cookie](https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/71c281d6-f102-4b0c-a15a-3c67efbe0947.705259c54328a7e317f3fc3b85a9a7e3.jpeg)
But all of this back and forth is a smoke screen for the true origins of the black and white cookie, which can actually be traced to good old fashioned commercialism.