NYC Will Still Have Its Kosher Black-and-White Cookies This Passover

(Bloomberg) -- In years past in Manhattan, one indicator that it was Passover could be found by walking down a stretch of Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side, around 84th Street. In advance of the holiday, a line snaked down the block outside William Greenberg Jr. Desserts as customers waited for boxes of dense chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons, moist honey cake loaves, and, more recently, kosher-for-Passover mini black-and-white cookies. The lines got so long that owner Carol Becker started installing trucks outside to facilitate the pickup of the desserts.

This year there will be no line.

Like everything else in the world, Greenberg’s operation has been upended by the new coronavirus. Technically the bakery could have stayed open during the city’s lockdown; several in New York have continued offering limited service, including bread specialist Orwashers and Levain, known for its softball-size chocolate chip cookies. Breads Bakery has also stayed in operation and is expanding its selections with a special Passover meal on the menu, “Seder in the Balagan” (Hebrew for “order in the disorder”), along with its flourless cakes and chocolate chip cookies.

But Becker closed her three bakery locations—besides the landmark Upper East Side store, there’s one in the Plaza Hotel and one at Hudson Yards—on March 15 when Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a shelter-in-place order. She’d planned to keep them shuttered until the pandemic is over.

As a result, the city came perilously close to not having kosher black-and-white cookies for the holiday.

“I was conflicted,” she says. “I don’t want to put my staff at risk by coming in to bake and serve. I’m not going to make a lot of money from it.” Then, she decided, “it’s Passover. The bakery is a mainstay for so many families. It’s a physical part of the holiday people can have at virtual Seder.”

Becker is making a fraction of the baked goods that she has in past years. In 2019 the bakery sold 1,500 pounds of macaroons and 400 pounds of Passover-friendly mini black-and-whites. (For the holiday, Becker replaces the flour with a combination of potato starch and matzo cake meal; compared with the original, the base has a cakier texture, but the chocolate and vanilla frostings are the same.)

This year she’ll make only about a quarter the amount of each (the macaroons are $32 a pound, cookies $28 for 10), as well as honey cakes ($18) and flourless chocolate cake ($32). That’s in part because, due to safety concerns, she’s limiting the hours her employees will work—baking takes place only through this Sunday at the South Bronx kitchen. It’s also because demand is much lower. While virtual Seders might be large in scope, they’re small in actuality and don’t require 5 pounds of macaroons and multiple sponge cakes.

Greenberg started getting Passover orders seconds after announcing it, enough to extend the deadline: the site closes for new orders at 8 p.m. on April 4, and deliveries will be sent by FedEx.

Becker says requests have come in from all over the country, from Florida to California to Texas. But the majority of the Greenberg desserts are so far destined for one place—the Hamptons.

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