The Perfect Cookie

Starred review from July 3, 2017
This latest book from ATK is an irresistible offering of 250 cookie, brownie, and bar recipes. A read through the comprehensive techniques section will inspire new and seasoned bakers alike. The various types of cookie-mixing methods explained here, including creaming and reverse creaming, are themselves worth the price of the book. Recipes are exacting and can sometimes feel overly complicated, although there are simple recipes throughout, including for lemon sour-cream cookies, coffee-toffee cookies, and old-fashioned applesauce cookies. A chapter on rolled, shaped, and pressed cookies features unusual combinations of flavor and texture, such as hazelnut lemon curd thumbprints, fudgy peanut butter mousse cups, and cornmeal orange cookies. Twenty types of brownies and blondies, including fudge brownies and butterscotch meringue bars, should satisfy many tastes. There is a terrific selection of bar cookie recipes, which include reliable recipes for classics such as lemon bars and cheesecake bars, as well as for the more innovative pear-cherry streusel bars and white-chocolate raspberry bars. This book wouldn’t be complete without a chapter on Christmas cookies, and the recipes included here do not disappoint: old favorites such as linzer sandwich cookies are well represented, along with new inventions such as eggnog snickerdoodles. This is a must-have for cookie lovers.

Starred review from August 1, 2017

The editors at America's Test Kitchen pack decades of baking experience into this impressive volume of 250 recipes for cookies, brownies, bars, and no-bake confections. Here you'll find only the best, as chocolate crinkle cookies, ultranutty pecan bars, rocky road bark, and other treats have all survived scrupulous testing. American favorites are predominantly represented, but there are plenty of international cookies to enliven everyday and holiday cookie plates. It's wonderfully convenient to have these recipes in one place, though there is some overlap with The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book and The Cook's Illustrated Baking Book. Supplement this workhorse collection with Dorie Greenspan's Dorie's Cookies and you'll be set for years. VERDICT Whether you're a fan of crisp or chewy cookies (or crisp-chewy cookies), you'll find a wealth of keeper recipes within these pages.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017

The editors at America's Test Kitchen pack decades of baking experience into this impressive volume of 250 recipes for cookies, brownies, bars, and no-bake confections. Here you'll find only the best, as chocolate crinkle cookies, ultranutty pecan bars, rocky road bark, and other treats have all survived scrupulous testing. American favorites are predominantly represented, but there are plenty of international cookies to enliven everyday and holiday cookie plates. It's wonderfully convenient to have these recipes in one place, though there is some overlap with The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book and The Cook's Illustrated Baking Book. Supplement this workhorse collection with Dorie Greenspan's Dorie's Cookies and you'll be set for years. VERDICT Whether you're a fan of crisp or chewy cookies (or crisp-chewy cookies), you'll find a wealth of keeper recipes within these pages.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.