The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion: The Essential Cookie Cookbook

by King Arthur Flour

Book Overview

The bakers begin by singling out the "Nine Essential Cookies" and variations that reflect a variety of tastes, textures, and ingredients: browniessugar cookieschocolate chip cookiesshortbreadoatmeal cookiespeanut butter cookiesmolasses-ginger cookiesbiscottidecorated cookies here in one place.

The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion includes full chapters on drop cookies, roll-out cookies, shaped cookies, batter cookies, no-bake cookies, and bars...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0881506591
• ISBN13: 9780881506594
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Countryman Press
• Length: 536 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 8.4" x 10.2"

Customer Reviews

Good, But Not flexi Bound as Advertised

This is an excellent book with loads of recipes and tips. The content is as promised, but I expected (and wanted) a flexi bound volume. They are so much easier to lay flat while using and I was a bit disappointed to receive a bound volume.

Bought as gift

I bought this book as a gift for my 17year-old granddaughter who loves to bake.

Fantastic Cookbook

I am a cookie-aholic and have many, many cookbooks. This one is great and has lots of interesting, non-standard recipes, such as granola bars, cinnamon bun cookies, etc. I have made many of the recipes and have had no complaints - only compliments.

500 pages of pure bliss

The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion is not a cookbook, it's an encyclopedia. Of course, you'll find the "regulars" here but along side them are recipes for fortune cookies, moon pies, elephant ears, and my absolute favorites, stroopwafels. The later being those wonderful caramel filled waffle sandwiches that you set atop your steaming cup of tea or coffee to heat prior to savoring. In addition to the hundreds of delicious cookies, bars, and biscotti recipes, the bakers included icing, ganache, and glazes to top everything off. This massive collection is great for the seasoned baker as well as the beginner since they start you off with basic instructions and an introduction to baking terms. King Arthur Flour has the most extensive collection of baking supplies you will ever find under one roof. Their flour's quality is miles above the competition and their ingredients are just superior. What I love the most about the "Cookie Companion" is how they don't push their retail business, this is just about helping you make the very best cookies imaginable. I'm getting a few more copies for Christmas gifts.

Don't let Cookie Monster know where you live

This cookbook is, in short, spectacular and I expect it to become a classic reference for bakers everywhere. Here's the thing. When I was growing up, my mother baked the most wonderful oatmeal cookies. They were soft and didn't flatten out much, so they stood up like little mountains of tasty goodness. Now that she doesn't cook anymore (God knows why), I have been unable to find cookies quite like them: oatmeal cookies bought in mall bakeries or baked by my colleagues at work are (inevitably) flat cookies that are either stiff and crunchy or soft and chewy. Now, I loved crunchy oatmeal cookies and chewy oatmeal cookies as much as the next guy, but I miss the old softies. Enter THE KING ARTHUR FLOUR COOKIE COMPANION! THE KING ARTHUR FLOUR COOKIE COMPANION outlines nine "essential" cookies and oatmeal cookies are one of them. For each of these "essential" cookie types, the authors include from two to four basic recipes depending on what style of cookie you want to bake. Thus, for the oatmeal cookie, for example, there are recipes for a chewy cookie, a crunchy cookie, a crisp cookie, and (tada!) a SOFT COOKIE! My prayers have been answered. But wait, there's more! There are literally dozens of variations on each "essential" cookie. Just choose the basic recipe that matches your preferences and then follow the additional instructions for creating the variation. Thus, each variation can be made in two to four different ways. In addition to oatmeal cookies, the other "essentials" are chocolate chip, sugar, molasses, peanut butter, shortbread, biscotti, brownies, and decorated cookies. The "essential" cookies and all of their variations comprise less than a third of this book, so there are plenty of other cookies of all sorts included here; virtually any cookie which regularly occupies your dreams and aspirations can be found in THE KING ARTHUR FLOUR COOKIE COMPANION as well as many other you dared not dream existed. Gingerbread Houses? You bet! Hamantaschen? There is even a recipe for making your own hamantaschen filling from scratch. Mailanderli? I don't even know what that is, but it's here! As a beginning baker myself, the part of THE KING ARTHUR FLOUR COOKIE COMPANION that I find extremely helpful is the "Getting Started" section. This generous section lays out the whole theory and practice of cookie baking from recommended equipment to technique to what makes a cookie spread out or become crunchy or burn, etc. More than just a kitchen reference, this is a book that I can curl up with and just read for pleasure (though it does make me hungry). For the beginning baker like myself to the experienced hack to the cynical master chef, I give THE KING ARTHUR FLOUR COOKIE COMPANION my highest rating: five brownie points. Jeremy W. Forstadt

Best General Purpose Cookie Cookbook So Far

`The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion' by King Arthur staff bakers and recipe testers, with a major assist from Laura Brody and the usual platoon of editors and designers from W. W. Norton and The Courtryman Press of Woodstock, Vermont is certainly the very best general purpose cookie book I have reviewed to date. I say this with the important caveat that I have yet to review major cookie books by baking heavyweights Nick Malgieri, Maida Heatter, and Carol Walter. It is important to say that the value of the book is not based on its exhaustive coverage of cookie recipes, although in over 500 pages, the book certainly covers all but a few corners of the far flung land of cookie baking. While it does leave out some important recipes, such as the famous thin Moravian ginger cookies of North Carolina, its real value is in its meticulous description of all those factors that influence great cookie baking. While a lot of cookie baking is a lot more forgiving than, say, pastry or biscuits or cheesecake, it is still baking, which means that a change in ingredients which would mean nothing to a sautee or a braise will mean the difference between a great cookie and a disappointment. The clearest example of this sensitivity is in the selection of shortening, where the major choices are butter, lard, margarine, or vegetable shortenings such as Crisco. Each option has a significant effect on taste and the degree that a drop cookie will rise or spread. And, that's before you even take nutritional aspects into account with tradeoffs between the saturated fats of butter and the transfats of margarine. Add in the effects of different sugars and different flours and you start to wonder how a cookie ever manages to get made. Oddly enough, the most complicated ingredient, the egg, seems to be the least finicky. All you do is be sure you use large eggs and bring them to room temperature before mixing them into other ingredients. The fact is, as long as you are good at following directions, you have in this book a terrific collection of recipes for an incredibly modest list price of less than $30 which I am virtually certain will work for you every time. I repeat, this assumes you follow directions and don't do any substituting unless you really know what you are doing. A perfect example of how this book can improve your cookie baking is the case of my favorite Snickerdoodle recipe from Nancy Baggett's `The All American Cookie Book'. I have been quite pleased with my results from this recipe ever since it became my standard, except that I would like them to spread out a bit less. Nancy's recipe calls for all butter and I happen to be using White Lily flour, which is relatively low in protein (a great pie crust flour, to be sure). It turns out that butter, low protein flour, and high sugar content all contribute to spreading, not to mention dropping the cookie dough onto a warm sheet. And here I thought it was all due to the corn syrup in Nancy's recipe. My most