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The Perfect Cookie: Your Ultimate Guide to Foolproof Cookies, Brownies & Bars
| Title | The Perfect Cookie: Your Ultimate Guide to Foolproof Cookies, Brownies & Bars |
| Writer | |
| Date | 2023-11-16 18:52:34 |
| Type | |
| Link | Listen Read |
Desciption
Featured in the New York Times book Review, Real Simple, Huffington Post, Forbes, Parade, and Southern Living. Portable, fun to make, easy to gift, and open to countless flavor variations, cookies are everyone's favorite sweet treat. America's Test Kitchen has years of experience making the very best cookies; in The Perfect Cookie , the test kitchen has collected all of that knowledge in one place for the definitive guide to cookie baking. This comprehensive anthology includes kitchen-tested, never-fail recipes for cookie jar classics, in addition to recipes for rich and chewy brownies, fruit-and-crumble-topped bars, quick no-bake confections, holiday favorites, and even candies like fudge and truffles; they're all included in this gorgeous package, with a full-page photo showing off every recipe. And, as only the test kitchen can, there are tips and tricks throughout the chapters, as well as an introductory section to get you started with insight on everything from what makes a cookie chewy versus crispy to what baking sheet you should buy so that your cookies bake evenly every time. The result? The perfect cookie.
Review
Over the last 2.5 years, I have made 129 of the 174 recipes in this book (yes, the back cover says there are more than 250 but that count includes all the variations offered in some recipes). This is an excellent book. The variety of recipes is great. While it is called The Perfect Cookie, there are chapters for brownies, bars, and no-bake cookies and I'm not sure I would consider all of the recipes cookies.Overall, in the nearly 11 dozen recipes I made, there were very few recipes I didn't like and wouldn't make again, and a ton of recipes I was not excited about and ended up loving (Russian Cheese Cookies, p 127 - seriously amazing).Many people have told me they think ATK recipes are fussy or overly complicated. I've never understood this criticism so I don't know that I can adequately respond except to say you'll find a range of difficulty levels in this book. From easy drop cookies to puff pastry and specialized tools.My main criticism of this book is the true for many cookbooks: "cover tightly with plastic wrap" or "line baking sheet with parchment paper" are frequently included. I almost never followed this guidance and think it's completely unnecessary. I wish they would simply say "cover" or "put in an airtight container."My other minor frustration with this book is that they don't include metric weight measurements for ingredients. I'm glad there are weight measurements but using ounces instead of grams means that many of the ingredients are only listed with volume ingredients. For those of us who primarily cook and bake with weight, this requires going back and forth between ways of measuring, which is annoying but not a deal breaker.While I'm not sure I'll make all 174 recipes, I will continue baking new recipes in here and expect I will enjoy most of them. Here are some of my favorites. I have only made a couple recipes from the Let's Get Fancy and No-Bake Cookies & Candies chapters and haven't made any from You'll Never Know They're Gluten-Free.Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies, p 27Chocolate Sugar Cookies, p 40Chewy Chocolate Cookies, p 51Russian Cheese Cookies, p 127Chocolate Turtle Cookies, p 136Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie, p 151Palmiers, p 200Ultimate Turtle Brownies, p 252Mississippi Mud Brownies, p 267Lemon Bars, p 280Salted Nut Roll, p 341Noche Buena Chocolate Sandwich Cookies, p 397
