chocolate meringue cookies easy dessert
Photo credit Rinne Allen

These Chocolate Cookies Have a Sweet Southern Jewish History

Chocolate chewies are packed with pecans and intensely chocolatey.

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When the Russian Jewish immigrant Isadore Gottlieb opened Gottlieb’s Bakery in 1884 on Bull Street in downtown Savannah, he began a baking dynasty. For generations, his cinnamon rolls, rye and challah breads and these chocolate meringue cookies were an important part of being Jewish in Savannah.

The cookies have an intense chocolaty-ness and an irresistible chewiness that seems to amplify if you freeze them briefly. The pecans toast magically as the cookies bake. The cookies can be gluten-free if you bake them with cornstarch or a gluten-free flour blend, and they may have been baked and sold during Passover. At the Central Markets grocery stores in Texas, cookies like these are known as “forgotten” cookies, because after baking, they were left in a turned-off oven to crisp (thus forgotten). Gottlieb’s closed in 1994, but now you can bake the cookies at home. 

Note: Store in an airtight container at room temperature for one week. Freeze for up to three months.

Taken from “Baking in the American South: 200 Recipes and Their Untold Stories” by Anne Byrn.  Copyright © 2024 by Anne Byrn. Photographs © 2024 by Rinne Allen.  Used by permission of Harper Celebrate. 

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Love this recipe? Check out this blackberry jam cake with caramel icing from “Baking in the American South.”

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    • The Nosher

      Great question! We haven’t tested them with potato starch but it should work. Please let us know how they turn out if you do.

  • Rhoda London

    When I moved to Jacksonville, FL in 1990, one of our famous Temple bakers was from Savannah and made these cookies. She graciously shared the recipe and I have made them on occasion for many years. I was delighted to see the recipe in The Nosher and highly recommend it. What a wonderful remembrance of a favorite Temple member and her favorite bakery! BTW, the almond florentines from Gottlieb’s is another favorite.






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