sunread_book_COOKIES

“Dorie’s Cookies” by Dorie Greenspan. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. 518 pages, $35 (hardcover).

Dorie Greenspan has been writing cookbooks for 25 years, including the New York Times best-seller “Around My French Table,” which was named Cookbook of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She also published “Baking Chez Moi” and the James Beard Award-winning “Baking From My Home to Yours.”

In “Dorie’s Cookies,” she focuses specifically on cookie treats. She explains in her introduction that she is known to have awakened in the middle of the night because she had invented a new cookie recipe in her dreams. In her new book, she assembles more than 160 cookie recipes, including all of the ones used at her former “cookie emporium” in New York City, Beurre & Sel.

This grand volume opens with sections on techniques, ingredients and gear that can assist successful cookie baking. Under “Beating butter, sugar and eggs together,” the author recommends avoiding beating at high speed to reduce aeration of the dough. She also provides a method for discovering an oven’s hot spots so the baker can avoid areas that will overcook cookies. In addition, she suggests baking with fine sea salt but warns that not all sea salts are equally salty so a taste test should determine the one you like best. The author also includes suggestions regarding cooking gear such as a food processor, baking sheets, parchment paper, silicone baking mats and cooling racks.

There are six subsections of recipes: brownies, bars, break-ups and biscotti, cookies for every day, any day, cookies for weekends, holidays and other celebrations, the beurre & sel collection, cocktail cookies and cookie go-alongs and basics.

In the first of these, Dorie gives her recipe for leckerli, which she describes as “a kind of spice cookie,” before providing its background in the Basel area of Switzerland and also in Alsace. She then adds that leckerli can be made up to two weeks before eating and that its dough needs to rest for a day or two to develop flavor before it is baked. For most recipes, she includes tips for storing each variety. For some, she provides an alternate recipe for the cookie in a section she calls “Playing Around.”

Included in Dorie’s extensive selection of recipes are such yummy-sounding treats as peanut butter and fudge brownies, crumb-topped apple bars, chocolate-pecan pie cookie bars, blueberry-buttermilk pie bars, coffee malteds, mocha-ricotta puffs, rose-hibiscus shortbread fans, devil’s food wafflets with chocolate sauce, Greek honey dainties, pumpkin whoopie pies with dulce de leche filling, coconut patties, parmesan galettes, triscuity bites and use-it-for-everything streusel. Have I listed enough varieties to make you salivate yet? Each chapter starts with a list of the recipes to follow, and a detailed index concludes the volume.

“Dorie’s Cookies” would make an excellent holiday or birthday gift for any cook/baker who wants to create a variety of delicious cookie treats that will be very popular with family and friends. The numerous color plates are mouth-watering and entice the reader to either bake quickly or find someone who does. I recommend this book very highly. As Greenspan puts it: “This is the book I dreamed it would be, filled with the recipes I loved sharing with my family and friends, ones I want to share with you and ones I hope you’ll share with the cookie monsters and lovers in your life. C is for Cookie. Bake them, share them and enjoy them!”

— Reviewed by Richard Weigel, Western Kentucky University History Department.