The Christmas Cookie Book [Paperback]

Lou Seibert (Author), Frankie Frankeny (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2000

From spicy Gingerbread to simple and elegant Biscotti, The Christmas Cookie Book offers up a mouthwatering collection of forty traditional and contemporary cookie recipes. Classics like Sugar Cookies and Spritz make an appearance alongside more modern takes on long-cherished recipes such as French Lemon Wafers and Mahogany-Iced Brown Bears. Baking expert Lou Pappas shares the enchanting history of Christmas cookies and demonstrates which are best for shipping, which are fun to bake with kids, and which make the most elegant cookie-tray displays. With tempting photographs throughout, this book is a joyous celebration of baking, giving, and most importantly, enjoying everyone's favorite Christmastime treat.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Prolific food writer Pappas is the author of more than 30 other cookbooks. Her latest includes recipes for Christmas cookies organized by category, from "Timeless Traditional Cookies" to "Elegant Party Cookies." The recipes are fine, but there are only 40 of them, and many of them are familiar. Most libraries with more extensive cookie books, such as Nancy Baggett's recent All-American Cookie Book (LJ 8/01) and Nick Malgieri's Cookies Unlimited (LJ 8/00), can skip this; only for comprehensive baking collections.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Lou Seibert Pappas is the author of many cookbooks, including Crepes (0-8118-1696-6), Coffee Cakes (0-8118-2215-X), and Sorbets and Ice Creams (0-8118-1573-0). She lives in Palo Alto, California.

Frankie Frankeny is a San Francisco-based photographer whose work has illustrated many books, including Wookiee Cookies (0-8118-2184-6) and The Christmas Cookie Book (0-8118-3095-0).

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811830950
• ISBN-13: 978-0811830959
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 7.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,009,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars tasteless, December 18, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Christmas Cookie Book (Paperback)

I tried 2 recipes: the Florentines- which were worse than tasteless, they also spread so much and were so thin/holey, that the chocolate on the back dripped through, making it basically a very unattractive thing.
The 2nd recipe was for lemon wafers: this time I was prepared for a weak cookie so I added half again the lemon zest, AND I added a couple of drops of lemon flavoring....well it was better texture but again it would have been tasteless had I not doctored it up a bit. They were still quite flavorless.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not perfect, but enjoyable, November 28, 2006

By 

H. Grove "Errant Dreams Reviews" (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Christmas Cookie Book (Paperback)

This is a comparatively small book, but the presentation is beautiful and the photos are elegant and lovely. Certainly it'll help to get you in the mood for holiday cooking. The only problem with the layout is that the name and description for each recipe is presented between the ingredient list and the directions. Because of this my brain keeps trying to associate each set of directions with the following list of ingredients rather than the preceding list; the only thing that keeps this from resulting in a ton of recipe mishaps is the fact that the book starts each recipe on a new page.

The book includes a wonderful array of fairly traditional recipes from all over the place, although Pappas often puts her own touch on them: Springerle cookies, Lebkuchen, gingerbread, Viennese marzipan bells, sugar cookies, frosty snowmen, pecan snowdrops, gingersnaps, Florentines, Norwegian lace cookies, macadamia-white chocolate brownies, and plenty more.

For the most part these recipes are pretty simple and easy; cookies don't usually take a lot of work. I only had problems with one of the recipes we tried: the embossed macadamia cookies. The dough is very dry (vanilla and butter are the only non-dry ingredients), and for a while I wondered if the dough was even going to come together as a dough; a little warning that this would be the case might have been nice. Also, the directions for flattening and decorating the cookies really didn't work very well. They said to "dip a dampened cookie press... into the bowl of sugar, then press a ball to flatten...." The idea is that it leaves behind a pattern in the dough and decorating sugar. Instead, the dampened press made the bowl of sugar clump up and stick to itself, and the sugar rarely stayed behind on the cookies. It ended up working a lot better to use the dampened press to flatten the cookies, then sprinkle colored sugar overtop. It might not have made the nice designs from the photo, but it looked better than what we started with by following the directions! The flavors worked out better than the directions--the Norwegian lace cookies are the best I've ever had, and I love those macadamia cookies.

This might not be a 100% perfect cookbook, but it's a beautiful and inspiring source of Christmas cookies, and if that's what you're looking for I think you'll enjoy it!

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT!..., February 16, 2002

By 

camella (AUSTIN, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Christmas Cookie Book (Paperback)

I LOVE THIS BOOK! THE PHOTOGGRAPHY IS SO SIMPLE AND BEAUTIFUL AND THE RECIPES ARE SOME OF MY FAVORITES. LOU PAPPAS HAS A DELICATE PALATE THAT DOESN'T OVERPOWER THE PASTRY WITH ONE INGREDIENT. I HAVE TASTED ALMOST EVERY RECIPE SO I SHOULD KNOW!! IT IS SO GOOD I GAVE THIS TO 8 FRIENDS FOR CHRISTMAS AND THEY LOVED IT TOO.