Customer Reviews

The All-American Cookie Book

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you only own one cookie book in your life, make it this one. I know Maida Heater and Nick Malgieri and others have great books out there, but this book presents so many delicious cookies made with accessible ingredients (mostly) and each cookie has been just delicious. My favorite is the Chocolate Malt Cookie with Chocolate Malt Cream Cheese filling. Boy! It's worth searching out malt powder (the only ingredient that may be hard to find.) The Cranberry Ribbon Cookies are really tasty (though I changed the cherry preserves to orange marmalade).

The directions are well-written and I appreciated the advice on how to freeze the cookies and how long the cookies will stay fresh. When you're cooking for a party or a holiday, it's good to have that information. I also liked to see all the photos. You know what the end product is supposed to look like. That kind of help is also appreciated.

I think you will get a lot of enjoyment out of making and eating the cookies in Ms. Baggett's book. Buying this book is not a risk. It's the surest bet out there.

I loved Nancy Baggett's book; I am a professional chef and cooking teacher myself and I've made probably fifteen recipes from this book, several of which I've used in classes during the holiday season. Particularly delicious were the Black-Bottom Mini Brownie Cups, Iced Cranberry-White Chocolate Drop Cookies, Ginger-Spice Crinkles, and the Coconut-Banana Chews (to which I added 2 tablespoons of cocoa with the dry ingredients-yum). I've given many copies of the book as gifts this year and will continue to do so. I found the book to be well-researched and user-friendly. The pictures (by photographer Alan Richardson) are gorgeous.

The cookies in this book (at least the ones I have tried) are incredible. As a warning, some of them are a little on the difficult side, but some are easy as...well, not pie since pie is difficult, but easy! A couple of warnings:

1. READ THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK. Even if you're an expert, you need to read the introductory information. Nancy Baggett is very specific in the beginning about certain things like the way she wants you to measure flour, etc. This also goes for the directions within the recipes about things like the temperatures of various ingredients. If you take your eggs out of the fridge and use them in the chocolate meringues, you'll be very disappointed in the cookies! If you're careful, however, you'll find them very delicious.

2. Know your oven. My oven, for example, takes a little longer than the ovens in *any* cookbook, even though I have had it tested for temperature. If you don't bake frequently, you'll want to test your cookies so you don't either undercook or overcook them.

Basically, this is an excellent book with detailed information, fascinating tidbits of cookie history great pictures and delicious cookie recipes for both the beginner and the expert.

This book lives up to it's name by being a collection of recipes originating in many different American regions, as reported in old, regional cookbooks. I've baked many cookies from this book and they have all exactly met expectations. But, the book does not just provide a source of very good cookie recipes, it also paints a little portrait of how a cuisine changes due to changing access to ingredients and cooking equipment. Many of the recipes date from the middle to the late 19th century because lots of important cookie ingredients such as both chocolate and vanilla did not become commonly available to the American baker until that time. Similarly, temperature controlled ovens did not become available until the late 19th century which is important since cookies are much more sensitive to temperature control than larger, more important goods such as bread.

The book contains chapters on nine (9) different types of cookies:

Sugar Cookies and Shortbreads, 18 recipes, including my very favorite Snickerdoodle recipe
Chocolate and White Chocolate Chip Cookies, 18 recipes, including 6 variations on chocolate chip
Chocolate and Mocha Cookies, 10 recipes, including `pies', bars, and sandwiches
Brownies, Blondes, and Other Bar Cookies, 25 recipes, including brownies and fudge cookies
Fruit, Pumpkin, and Carrot Cookies, 21 recipes, including tassies, ambrosia cookies, and fig cookies
Nut and Peanut Cookies, 16 recipes, including my favorite bourbon balls and peanut butter cookies
Oat, Coconut, and Sesame Seed Cookies, 13 recipes, including 7 variation on oatmeal cookies
Ginger, Spice, and Molasses Cookies, 13 recipes, including lots of Pennsylvania favorites
Cookie Decorating and Crafts, 18 recipes for cutout cookies and icings

I have not examined every cookie book currently available, and there is no question that this book does not include classically European cookies like Madeleines, but if what you want is good old fashioned cookies for holidays or otherwise, you will not go wrong with this book.

If you need additional sources of American cookies, this book includes a very respectable bibliography.

I also strongly urge the new cookie baker to read and follow Ms. Baggett's suggestions on how to succeed at cookie baking. I also urge new cookie bakers to follow individual recipes very carefully. They are adapted from old recipes, which may not have been very precise about measurements; however, Ms. Baggett's version of the recipes corrects that with great success in every case that I have tried. I am especially fond of her taking the trouble to leave selected recipes to using baking soda and cream of tartar, as in the snickerdoodles rather than replacing this pair with baking powder. One irony is that she has converted weights into volume measurements which are typically less precise, but it certainly works, due to the greater uniformity of ingredients today. It is also certainly easier for the home baker.

Photographs are welcome eye candy and are well done, but contribute little to your for success with the recipes.

Well done all around, Nancy.

This book is a winner. It has a lot of recipes, many new ones and some of your old favorites. Every recipe is detailed and the book is beautiful. Color photographs galore. I just baked the whoopie pies and they are just delicious. I can't wait to bake the Chocolate chip hazelnut cookies or the big coconut macaroons.

This is a wonderful book for both beginning and advanced bakers. A lot of thought and careful detail went into this book. There are several pictures, a very clear type face, extremely well written instructions, fun facts about the history of baking, and more. Plus it is loaded with tips throughout on how to improve your baking. I've carried several ideas over to different recipes. The recipe I keep coming back to is called chewy chocolate chunk monster cookies. Need I say more? I even had a question and emailed the author herself. She emailed me back right away with a very gracious and thoughtful response.

What a beautiful book full of so many delicious sounding cookies - I couldn't decide which cookies to make first! I baked the new York black and whites and they were fantastic. They looked just like the picture and tasted great - even better than the black and white cookies that I remember from my childhood visits to my grandmother's in Long Island, New York. I also tried the ice cream sandwich cookies - they looked and tasted great too.

The recipes had very clear instructions and were easy to follow.

I can't wait to bake many more delicious cookies from this great book!

I am in the process of starting a catering business, and wanted to offer the ever popular Black and White cookie in my cookie assortment. I tried countless recipes, only to be disappointed with the results. I just about gave up on Black and Whites, when I purchased Nancy Baggett's All-American Cookie Book.

I looked over the recipe, and decided to give it one more shot, and was I ever happy with the results. They were absolutely perfect. The cookie was cake like and moist, yet firm enough to withstand the heavy fondant. The fondant, was actually a true fondant, made with corn syrup, which all of the other recipes I tried were not, resulting in a delicious, and shiney icing.

To those other reviewers who did not like the Black and White cookies, I say, give it another chance. I have made this recipe many times, and they always come out fabulous!

I'm an experienced baker and pastry maker and really like the historic information in this book - I never really thought about how hard it must have been to bake cookies in former times. But the recipes (at least the ones I tried - Molasses Applesaucers and Old Fashioned Oatmeal Raisin Cookies) were disappointing: even using Ms. Baggett's measuring method, the amount of flour in the recipes was far too low and the resulting cookies were WAY TOO SWEET. The instructions are very repetitive. I'm glad I got the book at the library so I can return it.

I got this book before Christmas and decided to use it for all my Christmas cooking baking. Well, there were some hits, but also some 'not hits'. I made NY black & whites, Lemon Jumbles, White Choc. Macadamia Nut, Death by Choc. white choc. chunk, Maple Nut Bars, and Macadamia-Chocolate Meltaways.

For the hits:
Lemon Jumbles - very buttery; good texture; reciped amounts & instructions were accurate. (needed a little more icing though)
White Choc. Macadamia Nut cookie - very good texture; crispy at edges-chewy center; recipe amounts and instructions were accurate
Macadamia-Chocolate Meltaways - very buttery; good texture; 'adult' cookie because it is not very sweet; recipe amounts and instructions were accurate.

For the Misses:
Death by Choc. white choc. chunk - very dry; ratio of dry ingredients to fat (butter) was not correct; more like death by dryness than chocolate.
Maple Nut Bars - recipe amounts/ratio for the crust was definately wrong. The baked crust had formed cracks which allowed the liquid maple topping to seap thru the crust therefore made for a soggy mess.

Then there's the famous NY black & whites. The black icing does not look like the picture, but my family did like the cookie regardless. Not having tasted a real NY black & white, I can't really comment. Sorry.