The French Cookie Book: Classic and Contemporary Recipes for Easy and Elegant Cookies

by Paul Bugat and Bruce Healy

Book Overview

One of America's best pastry chefs explains the techniques of making a wide assortment of French cookies, from ever-popular Ladyfingers to delectable Gerbet Macaroons, and offers concise recipes,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688088333
• ISBN13: 9780688088330
• Release Date: November 1994
• Publisher: William Morrow and Company, Inc.
• Length: 511 Pages
• Weight: 3.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.3" x 1.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

sounds good

I dislike that there are no pictures of all these cookies I have never heard of. So I have to research the cookies so I know what they are suppose to look like

Great book, great service

I had heard about this book for years, but it is out of print and even the local library's copy had disappeared long ago. I knew the quality of the authors' work from "The Art of the Cake," which I have used to make many a French cake. "The French Cookie Book" looks like another thorough compendium of all sorts of French cookie forms and I am looking forward to baking some, especially the macarons. This may be a "used" book, but it's in excellent shape and came promptly a week after I placed the order.

Happy with cookie book

The cookbook was bought as a gift. I flipped through it and found it to be what I wanted.

A Keepsake!!

This book is a must have for any and all avid cookie bakers!! I mean, it's like totally awesome. I learned so much. For example, I never knew how to get that really pretty golden color that the German and French cookies have. They teach you cookie baking techniques that I have absolutely never heard of. Many of them however, a bit tedious for what seems to be such a simple cookie. However, if you want to take show stopping, crowd pleasing cookies to any event, you need this book. If you want to "show off" baking skills that you know you don't really have (but you want everyone to think that you do), you need this book. And finally, if you just love the taste of high quality butter cookies, this is the cookie book for you. I'm so glad I found this book!! You won't be disappointed.

The Lost World of Cookies

The authors, sadly, seem to be correct: fine cookies are a mostly lost art, even in France. I have read descriptions of and seem pictures of displays of cookies in sweet shops in Paris about a century ago. They contain a bewildering display of massive amounts of cookies in endless varieties. Today, these displays are almost extinct. This book is probably your last chance to learn how to produce these cookies, both for the amateur home cook and the professional. The authors seem to have done quite a bit of research and trial-and-error, as most of the recipes seem to be revivals and recreations as opposed to a recording of how they were actually done in production. As a result, the recipes have much more in common than they would have if they were the actual, original recipes.The key to all these different types is variation. In this book, there are many dozens of cookies, all very different in look and taste, yet all are based on only 7 basic recipes. With minor alterations in forming and flavors, you get a totally different cookie from the same recipe. Once you can make the basic recipe in a chapter, you can make all of the other cookies in the chapter, which is usually one or two dozen more. The seven types are: creamed sugar and butter, meringue, almond paste, sponge cake, tuiles, pâte sucrée, and puff pastry (yes, the authors expect you to make your own). I should also point out that these are traditional, fancy French patisserie; you will not find chocolate chips, oatmeal raisin cartwheels, or gingerbread men. The book also has several unusual instructions. Some recipes require a resting period of a few hours or even overnight. Whipping egg whites requires that you go past the stiff peak stage, a no-no in my book. It also calls for baking on a piece of newspaper, and wetting down the paper after baking to get the cookies off. They may seem odd, but each one worked as advertised, and you are well advised to follow the directions to the letter; attempts to skip them and do it the "normal" way will meet with failure. You will also need a substantial collection of unusual and specialty baking pans which are hard to find, if you can find them at all. I also find the instructions for tempering chocolate to be inadequate, and used a standard method for tempering chocolate. In the chapter on pâte sucrée, one is instructed to use the "smear" method of dough, it specifies ammonium carbonate and not baking soda, and it states that if the temperature is above 75, you can not do these recipes (the same author remark applies to the chapter on puff pastry). It also instructs you to wet the baking pan before putting down the dough so it stays glued down. The chapter on puff pastry has a good recipe for using up scraps along with recommended recipes that can use it. It also has a good and reliable recipe for chocolate puff pastry. There are several nice touches to the recipes. All have a specific list of equipment that you need; however, they only

They're all here. And they're not as hard as you think!

I'm not very familiar with "real" French cookies, so I didn't know how hard or easy they'd be. It turns out that they'd probably have been a lot more work without this book. The author gives very clear line drawings exactly when they're most needed, tells you exactly what equipment you need up front, explains how to use the equipment you're probably not all that familiar with, and gives beautifully clear directions. The only troubles with the book is that some of the recipes are much longer to make than is clear from the first reading (the dough softens quicker than I expected, needs to chill 10 times, etc.), and it's basically impossible to plan in advance how long one of these batches will take to put together. An indicator of this would really have helped a lot. But they're SO good; it's amazing how much better cookies taste with just a little more time put into them and with a brilliant French chef's advice. Bon appetit!