King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion: The Essential Cookie Cookbook by King Aurthur Flour

From Barnes & Noble

The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, published in 2003, was selected as one of Food & Wine's 10 Best Cookbooks of the Year and garnered top cookbook honors at the 2004 James Beard Foundation Gala. Now the 200-year-old baking company hits us with an irresistible follow-up: a comprehensive guide to the art and science of making cookies. Professional wisdom on a homemade treat.

From the Publisher

America's favorite bakers turn a fresh eye on cookies—everyone's favorite homemade treat.

Drawing on the same commitment to the home-baking community that has earned them hundreds of thousands of dedicated followers, the bakers at King Arthur Flour guide you through more than 400 recipes, revealing the secrets to making your own mouthwatering cookies for any occasion.

The bakers begin by singling out the "Nine Essential Cookies" and variations that reflect a variety of tastes, textures, and ingredients:

• brownies
• sugar cookies
• chocolate chip cookies
• shortbread
• oatmeal cookies
• peanut butter cookies
• molasses-ginger cookies
• biscotti
• decorated cookies

You'll find complete instructions for making cookie icings, fillings, and dips. You'll find a thorough overview of the essential ingredients of cookie baking, explaining the chemistry of flours and grains, leavens, sweeteners, fats, dairy products, flavorings, and the science of how these ingredients work together. You'll also learn tips on substitutions and variations; measuring and weighing ingredients; even advice on high-altitude baking. Recipes are enhanced with sidebars providing hints, shortcuts, troubleshooting advice, and recipe lore. And each recipe is accompanied by a complete nutritional analysis. Illustrations throughout the book provide clear step-by-step instructions that take the mystery out of such baking terms as "creaming," "soft-ball stage," and "folding." Finally, a comprehensive illustrated chapter describes the essential baking tools you'll want to have on hand.

The New York Times Book Review - Corby Kummer

I feel about the King Arthur people the way so many cooks do about Cook's Illustrated magazine: what they say goes. So even if the cookies in THE KING ARTHUR FLOUR COOKIE COMPANION (Countryman, $29.95) aren't startlingly original, I know I'll be given just the right advice when I set out to make them and I won't have a worry from start to finish. And, in fact, I do want to make the book's brown sugar almond crisps (thin sugar cookies with roasted salted almonds pressed into the top), its English digestive biscuits with whole-wheat flour and make-in-a-flash chocolate chip cookie bars, inspired by Ruth Wakefield. You remember Mrs. Wakefield? Proprietor of that little Massachusetts restaurant called the Toll House? Whatever you may have been thinking, Massachusetts really can unite the country again.

MSNBC.com - Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

Home bakers cross some kind of line when we make our first order from Vermont's King Arthur Flour. Suddenly, supermarket staples are no longer good enough for us, and we're ordering special yeast, bread-base mix-ins, and more. Last year King Arthur came out with its Baking Companion cookbook, and now just in time for the holidays, there's The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion (Countryman Press, $30).

The Companions are not small books, and if you've already got the Baking Companion, you might want to think twice about the Cookie Companion. But if you live for an annual cookie exchange, this is your book.

Some of the recipes, such as the delicate Vanilla Dreams, require special ingredients (baker's ammonnia for the Dreams), which are available from King Arthur, naturally. But most don't.

I've made plenty of molasses cookies, but King Arthur's recipe was easy and fast, and produced a light, sweet if not exactly spicy treat. Bakers can choose between a soft and crisp recipe, a nice nod to different tastes.

Homemade graham crackers are not something I've ever contemplated baking before seeing the recipe here. They were fun and easy to make, but lacked the smooth, sweet taste of the grocery-store brands. I won't make them again.

I have more luck with a variety of Christmas cookies. One simple recipe allows the baker to make chocolate, vanilla and fruit-flavored doughs (that last uses dry Jello to flavor and color). Once the basic doughs are ready, they can be shaped into any number of swirls, stripes and checkerboards, and my officemates were quite impressed. Another beautiful-looking treat, the stained-glass cookies shown at the top of this story, were exquisite enough to be ornaments. Unfortunately, people tended to eat the cookie part and throw away the hard-candy center, which tasted fine, but wasn't what they expected in a cookie.

Camelot may have existed for only one brief shining moment, but in the world of baking, King Arthur still reigns supreme.

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