Amerikaner/Black and White cookies

It’s the end of the school year. That always means I will be baking for end-of-year parties. With most people bringing chocolate chip cookies, I usually try to make something different. This year, I stumbled across an old recipe of Amerikaner. They are like your Black and White Cookies.

Why are they called Amerikaner (Americans) in Germany? Nobody is sure, but there are two good stories. In one GI’s were not able to find all the ingredients for an American Cake during the Second World War, thus creating the “Amerikaner”. The other has Germans not being able to pronounce “Black and White Cookies” which the Americans brought over in the 50’s, so that they just called them “Amerikaner”. Either one has their origins from the Americans and I thank you for it!

I love their vanilla flavored, cakey-soft texture with a slightly crunchy icing on the underside, which becomes the upper side. Oh, and the choices of icings and decorations – there are no limits. The traditional icing is just powdered sugar and water- at least in Germany- but who is to keep you from using melted chocolate or colors in your icing? This is actually a wonderful treat to make or decorate with children. They get to make faces with M&M’s, beautiful sprinkles or melted chocolate in a candy melt bottle. As you can see our Emily had quite a lot of fun with it!

Cookie exchange and recipes

I am organizing a cookie exchange with a friend. This is our first time hosting it, so we put out an evite with a great Christmassy cookie picture and a cute saying and requested 6 dozen cookies. We have been bombarded with people saying that is too much. Really? 6 dozen will not last long in our house. That is about one doubled cookie recipe. And the funny thing is, kind of funny to me, at least, that we are also making appetizers, cleaning house, shopping for little gifts, and are making all these cookies on top of it. At the end of the cookie exchange, we will all go home with 6 dozen cookies, currently 13 different varieties. How awesome is that? Who will stand in the kitchen and make that many different cookies and then have 3 dozen of each? After sampling them all, friends come over, family over the holidays, maybe teachers gifts, bamm, there are non left by New Years day. I will be surprised if ours will make it past Christmas. Then again, we also have the gingerbread house! Pictures to follow soon!!!