Customer Reviews

1001 Cookie Recipes: The Ultimate A-To-Z Collection of Bars, Drops, Crescents, Snaps, Squares, Biscuits, and Everything That Crumbles

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I am absolutely amazed that this book was published with the number of typos in the recipes. I choose 7 recipes randomly from throughout this book and of those 7, six of them had HUGE ingredient typos. For example:

2 1/4 tablespoons of flour instead of 2 1/4 CUPS!

1 teaspoon of liquid ingredients to 4 1/4 cups of dry!

I will NEVER use this cookbook again as I cannot trust ANY of the recipes to be correct.

Yes it's a "pretty" book. Yes it has a large number of recipes. However, if the author/editor and publisher are not going to test the recipes or pay attention to the accuracy of the final galleys, then it would have been better NOT to publish it at all. Not only did I waste my money on the purchase of this book, but I also wasted my money on the ingredients for the 7 recipes I choose.

I bought this book because it seemed to offer a wide variety of recipies. After bringing it home and taking a more thorough look through, I realized that many of the recipes are very similar. I've tried four different recipes so far and only one came out mediocre (at best). There were major ingredients mistakes in the other three recipes and the doughs just didn't have the right consistency. I am extremely disappointed with this book and will probably never use it again.

I, too, have noticed the homogeneity present in this book and, at first, was disappointed. However, in comparing several of the "same" recipes, I found them to be completely different. I am, for the most part, satisfied with the book. There are some typos and one has to wonder how that got by the editor. My one suggestion, and I cannot understate the importance of this: substitute butter for vegetable shortening. You will have both better flavor and consistency. And avoid the Norske Kroner recipe--there is NO body to the dough and it is impossible to handle.

No dout about it - there are more cookie recipes in this book than you are likely to find anywhere else. You'll find some exotic offerings as well as traditional home baked cookies. My problem with this book, however, is that it doesn't tell you anything about the recipes; it just lists the ingredients and gives you the baking instructions. This is especially frustrating when there are multiple recipes listed for a certain kind of cookie. For example, there are 5 recipes for "Ginger Cookies", but no description of what distinguishes each. Yes, I can read that they have slightly different ingredients, but I want the author to tell me what is special about each recipe. For example, which one produces a crisper cookie, which one has a longer shelf life, which has the most intense ginger flavor? Also, there appear to be some traditional international recipes here, but there is no explanation of the origin or tradition about the cookies. Finally, the same recipes seem to appear again and again with slightly different names and shapes. I think you'd be hard pressed to say that there are 1001 unique cookie recipes in this book.

This guy is obsessed with vegetable shortening. Talk about bland cookies. Not to mention "1001" is a total lie. Anyone notice the 'repeat' recipes with cleverly (yeah right) disguised new names? Snickerdoodles, Nibbles and Cinnamon Balls are EXACTLY the SAME recipes... just in a different ORDER in printing. So are the Mexican Wedding Cakes (what a clever name for the IDENTICAL second version: in Spanish!). Funny that the author talks about his father on his deathbed confessing his 'secret' ingredient in the 'best' chocolate chip cookies. you guessed it: SHORTENING!

Whatever happened to butter...

Not thrilled - many of the recipes feature shortening, which tends to give them a rather icky texture & taste. They also often seem very doughy and come out underdone.

This book is a marketing scam. It's got pretty photos, but all the cookies I made were failures. I ended up throwing out at least 3 batches from different recipes. I'm an accurate cook, and after following the recipes from this book, they came out absolutely inedible!!! Not even my sweet obssessed kids would eat them. I had to write this to warn others not to buy this book. Stick to recipe books that have been well received with tested recipes and written by well-known cooks.

It is very useful to have so many cookie recipes in one book at the same time. Even a very good baking book will have, at most a couple of dozen cookies. On the other hand, the results were rather variable and not totally reliable (one person, one oven, one typewriter, what did you expect?). The experienced baker will have a treasure trove of recipes that require a little fine tuning, while the neophyte will probably be met with more than a few disappointments.

The best part of this book is that each recipe has a picture of the cookie.

The bad part is everything else. The biggest problem is the flour measurement: it only lists cups, but does not list an equivalent weight, nor the method of flour measurement (spoon and sweep, scoop and sweep, etc.). The way flour is measured can mean the difference between a perfect cookie and a hockey puck.

The results were variable: cookies that spread too much, cookies that were dry and crumbly, bar cookies that were either over or under baked, instructions where it is not always clear when something is properly baked, etc.

The biggest problem is also its strongest point: all cookies are arranged alphabetically on the first word of the cookie name. This can be a big problem for, say shortbread. If you look under shortbread, you will find nothing. However it can be found under butterscotch, ginger, peanut butter, almond, Brazil nut, cashew, hazelnut, nut, American, and scotch. Buried at the back of the book where you will never find it, is a cross reference list of all recipes organized by cookie type (bar, drop, formed, nonedible, refrigerator, and rolled). It is here that you will have to do research to find the cookie that you want.

Important note for experienced cookie bakers: this a very handy reference book to keep on your bookshelf. Regardless of what type cookie you want, you will probably find it here. Just keep in mind that the recipes have not been vetted, and you should do a couple of trial runs in order to correct the recipes. If you are a professional doing a catering job that requires you to put out a platter of at least 2 dozen types of cookies, I can think of no better resource than this one.

I was VERY excited to buy this book, because I adore cookies of course. After trying a few of the recipes though, I have to say that this book is very disappointing. The recipes are just not that good. The cookies were very bland and not even remotely exceptional. I guess these people either didn't test these recipes out, or just have unbelievably low standards. When you write a cookbook, you should try to create the best possible recipe for each dish. They must not have cared too deeply. Another reviewer wrote quantity not quality. I agree!!! ...

I can't believe this ever got published! You can't trust any of the recipes, there are so many errors in amounts. It's obvious no one bothered to proofread it. Save your money.