Authors: Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero
Publisher: Da Capo Press–Lifelong Books (Member of Perseus Books Group), 245 pages
Book Review by Laxmi Chaandi
The authors of this book demonstrate their baking creativity in a hundred ways in this book that I could hardly wait to browse through.
Being a cookie and biscuit lover, I first looked at the back cover, found six photos and began to search of recipes for those six batches of cookies featured.
The top left photo of cream-colored cookies with nuts topped on them caught my eye first and looked for the page that had those. These are Pignoli almond cookies, a holiday favorite at most Italian bakeries. The cookies require almond paste, almond milk and a bit of almond extract as core ingredients. The cookies are topped with Pinole or pine nuts.
This book is divided into five sections and there are recipes for making regular, hard or chewy cookies, brownies or softies or others in between.
The five sections contain recipes for drop cookies, wholesome cookies, bar cookies, fancy cookies, and sliced cookies.
The drop cookies section has recipes for making basic cookies that use almond paste, chocolate, oatmeal, peanut butter and other items as main ingredients. Then, a variety of with fillings and /or toppings are used to make great cookies. These are combinations of fruits such as apricots, bananas, cherries, lime, pumpkin and raisins; vegetables such as carrots; and a variety of nuts such as almonds, peanuts, pine nuts, etc. Some of these cookies are spiced up with chocolate chips, ginger or mocha flavorings or tiny glitters.
The wholesome cookies section shows you how to eat what is good for your health – such as fruits – by baking them into sinful concoctions such as applesauce softies, apricot almond Quinoa chews, banana oatmeal breakfast cookies, orange agave chocolate chip cookies, and fruity oaty bars
The bar cookies in the third section contains sets of ingredients and directions for creating delights containing a variety of dried fruit such as coconuts, peanuts, pecans and walnuts; and fresh fruit as well, such as blueberries and cranberries, figs, lemons and limes, pumpkins and sweet potatoes, among others. Here you practice to make delicious treats such as blueberry spice crumb bars, caramel pecan bars, fruitcake bars, lemon bars, magical coconut cookie bars and whole wheat fig bars.
Get your exotic recipes in the Fancy cookies section. Have you heard of Lazy Samoas, Linzertorte thumbprint cookies, or Minonos? I had not heard of them until I got this book.
If you feel romantic, you can make and get your Starry Fudge Cookies, Your Hazelnut Fudge Dreamies, your Irish Crème Kisses, and your Ooh La Las from this section.
And if you want to go further, you can get your Nutty Wedding Cookies, Macadamia Lace Coookies, and your Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows from here.
The last – sliced and rolled cookies section – shows you how to make larger batches and numbers of cookies. Typically, the quantity starts at 16 and can go as large s 36 cookies. Get recipes for cookies you eat with coffee or tea, such as coffeehouse hermits, gingerbread biscotti, key lime shortbread rounds and Swedish chocolate balls.
The first 30 pages of this 245-page book provides you some “tools for success” some notes on trying different cookie times to perfect your process and some tips on troubleshooting, a must-read introductory part of this book for the novice or well-healed cookie-maker. Get, read and practice with this book to improve or perfect your skills.
