Eisdiele Capri

Rachel picked a very fun theme for this month’s Sugar High Friday: Childhood Delights. Fun, because, well, who doesn’t like to remember childhood times when you were looking forward to your birthday cake as much as to your birthday presents, when you loved to visit your grandmother just because you knew that she had some chocolates for you or when you were waiting all winter long for the ice-cream-season to begin, standing in the row on March 1st to eat the first ice-cream of the year :-).

As much fun I had thinking about my (very many) sugary Childhood Delights, as much work it was finding the perfect recipe to share, too. In fact as a child I loved jelly babies more than anything else :-). So thinking about sugar and me as a kid, first of all I had to think about jellies. But why jellies? Well, I have a sister who’s 6 years older than me and this means she had her own real money when I stil tried to buy ice-cream with bank-notes from monopoly. Anyway, I remember me and my best friend playing in the street (most likely with monopoly-money :-)) and sometimes meeting my sister. On lucky days my sister would give me 50 cents or sometimes even 1 mark (!) to do with it whatever I wanted to *wohoo :-).*. No doubt, my best friend and me would run instantly to the small supermarket just around the corner where you could buy all kind of jellies for just 5 cents each! We would spend the whole afternoon in there. There were jelly cherries, jelly smurfs, jelly mice and many more and, of course, it was a serious business chosing the right ones :-).

My cool sister and me :-).

Well, I didn’t want to make jellies, so this seriously complicated chosing my Childhood Delight for this month’s Sugar High Friday,:-). Luckily I remembered another thing I loved as a child, the what we call “Amerikaner” here, but I know most people know it as “Black and White Cookie”, New York’s most famous cookie :-). And this really took me back to my childhood, such a nice smell of lemon, yummy taste of buttermmilk and most of all: licking the batter … lol :-)!

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And that’s how it works (easy recipe)

Ingredients for 8 cookies:

* 160 gr flour
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 75 ml buttermilk
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
* 76 gr unsalted butter, softened
* 100 gr granulated sugar
* 1 large egg

For the icing:
200 gr confectioners sugar
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 to 2 tablespoons water
2 TB unsweetened cocoa powder

Make cookies:
Preheat oven to 175 °C.

1. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.
2. Stir together buttermilk and vanilla in a cup.
3. Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes, then add egg, beating until combined well.
4. Mix in flour mixture and buttermilk mixture. Mix until smooth.
5. Spoon batter about 2 inches apart onto a buttered large baking sheet. Bake in middle of oven until tops are puffed and pale golden, and cookies spring back when touched, 15 to 17 minutes.
6. Transfer to a rack and chill (to cool quickly), about 5 minutes.

Make icings while cookies chill:
1. Stir together half of confectioners sugar, lemon juice, vanilla in a small bowl until smooth.
2. Stir together other half of confectioners sugar, water and cacao in another small bowl until smooth.

Ice cookies:
Turn cookies flat sides up, then spread white icing over half of each and chocolate over other half.

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