Cookies at Home with The Culinary Institute of America [Hardcover]

Todd Knaster (Author), Culinary Institute of America (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 25, 2011 | Series: at Home with The Culinary Institute of America (Book 7)

Chewy, crispy, rich, and crunchy—who doesn't want a cookie right this minute?

In the tradition of Chocolates and Confections at Home with The Culinary Institute of America comes Cookies at Home with The Culinary Institute of America, featuring chewy, crispy, rich, and crunchy cookies and offering information about basic cookie-making techniques, equipment, and ingredients. The recipes include a range of options, from quick and easy Chocolate Chip Cookies and Fudge Brownies to cookies that will delight and inspire your guests, including Lemon Meringues and French Macaroons.

With beautiful full-color photography throughout, Cookies at Home with The Culinary Institute of America offers easy instructions and features nearly 100 recipes, with helpful tips for decorating cookies for special occasions and packing them for personal gifts.

• Includes nearly 100 delicious cookie recipes, from classic to contemporary, sweet to savory
• Features important step-by-step techniques and beautiful photographs throughout
• Developed with the authority of The Culinary Institute of America and the expert voice of Chef Todd Knaster

No matter what kind of cookies you love, from Triple Chocolate Cookies to the festive Gingerbread House, Cookies at Home with The Culinary Institute of America will help you take your home-baked cookies to new and delicious heights.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Cookies At Home with the culinary institute of america

From quick and easy Chocolate Chip Cookies and Fudge Brownies to delightful Lemon Meringues and French Macaroons, this delicious cookie compendium includes nearly 100 recipes of every type and stripe. Cookies at Home covers basic cookie-baking techniques and offers helpful tips on equipment, ingredients, and decorating—all beautifully illustrated with drawings and full-color photography throughout.

No matter what kind of cookies you favor, whether as simple as chocolate chip or as complex as a gingerbread house, this book helps you take your home-baked cookies to new and delicious heights. Chapters include:

Cookie Baking Equipment: Full details on how to stock your kitchen with everything you need (and nothing you don't) to bake delicious cookies that will delight friends and family alike.

Basic Baking Ingredients and Methods: Comprehensive explanations of both basic and special ingredients and their baking properties, as well as methods for mixing and preparation.

Décor and Packaging: Everything you need to know about decorating cookies, including chocolate décor, royal icing, and other techniques, plus packaging considerations when giving cookies as a gift.

Drop Cookies: Easy-to-follow recipes for basic drop cookies such as classic chocolate chip, peanut butter, and oatmeal, as well as more exciting, nontraditional recipes.

Bar Cookies: Simple but exciting recipes for traditional bar cookies like brownies and blondies plus techniques for layering and glazing.

Rolled, Cut-Out, and Sliced Cookies: Cookies that are cut or sliced from a flattened stiff dough before baking, including sugar cookies, gingerbread, and shortbread.

Molded, Stenciled, and Shaped Cookies: Unique and beautiful cookies using premade molds, stencils, or stamps, and usually decorated by hand.

Piped and Twice-Baked Cookies: Crisp and dry cookies, such as lemon meringue and biscotti, that are often dipped in chocolate or other coatings.

Savory Cookies: Mouthwatering baked concoctions using cheeses, herbs, vegetables, seasonings, and even meats—including puff pastries and canapés.

With simple step-by-step techniques, straightforward baking advice, and expertly tested recipes, Cookies at Home will enable you to produce cookies that will rival those of a seasoned professional baker.

From the Back Cover

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO MAKE DELICIOUS, HOME-BAKED COOKIES FOR EVERY OCCASION

Chewy, crispy, rich, and crunchy . . . who doesn't want a cookie right now? In Cookies at Home, you'll find crackles, thumbprints, butterballs, s'mores bars, kipferls, linzers, macaroons, blondies, amaretti, snickerdoodles, and anything else you can dream of. From beloved favorites like Mexican Wedding Cookies and zesty Lemon Bars to showstopping newcomers like Chocolate-Pecan Shortbread and Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies, you'll never run out of delicious ideas.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (October 25, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470412275
• ISBN-13: 978-0470412275
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 0.9 x 10.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327,426 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Start Cookie-Making Here December 28, 2011

By James Ellsworth VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have been baking cookies off and on for many years and we have 'family favorite' recipes but I still bought this book. I wanted to see if ideas had moved on since 'Fanny Farmer' (Marion Cunningham), the King Arthur Flour Cookbook and my grandma and mother's traditional recipes. I believe that this book, written by expert instructors at the Culinary Institute of America, offers a great way to get organized for cookie baking, to learn a wide range of basic techniques and to learn how to bake and decorate a range of cookies, using good recipes that show influences of Austrian, Italian, French, Hispanic and American baking traditions. More advanced bakers will find recipes that challenge notions of what flavors one finds in cookies and artistic bakers can learn how to do more ambitious cookie decorations.

The 218-page, square-shaped book fits on the typical bookshelf and features plenty of 'tasty' full-color photographs of finished products and of some key baking techniques (where appropriate.) The book starts with a chapter on useful cookie baking equipment: weighing and measuring tools; hand tools from rolling pins to sieves to knives, graters, zesters, whisks, spoons and spatulas; tools for baking such as parchement paper, pots, pans, baking sheets and cooling racks; and appliances like ovens, mixers, blenders and food processors. Next, the authors present material on basic ingredients and methods in cookie making. There is a chapter devoted to decorating and packaging cookies that is aimed at the home baker who wants to 'gift' cookies but is probably of more interest to the culinary student who is looking to open a shop or to bake for the restaurant trade. The remainder of the book addresses recipes for various types of cookies: drop cookies, bar cookies, rolled-out, sliced or cut-out cookies, molded, stenciled or otherwise shaped cookies, piped cookies and twice-baked cookies. A final chapter introduces the idea of savory cookies and biscuits to be used with appetizers or partnered with dessert items to add 'punch' or contrast. For seasonal interest, there is a section on baking a Holiday gingerbread house and a template set is included that can be traced and used to cut the cookie panels to assemble the project.

Recipes make roughly two-to-three dozen cookies and use traditional ingredients (not commercial bakery substitutes and additives). The focus on ingredients is aimed at real butter, true vanilla extract, cane sugar products, quality chocolate products and the like. Chocolate Chip, Gingersnaps and Peanut Butter cookie recipes aim to produce 'soft and chewy' products. Crisp cookies include the very popular pecan shortbread and Italian-influenced recipes include Amaretti and Pignoli cookies. Of course there are recipes for brownies: fudge brownies, cake brownies, peanut butter swirl brownies, German Chocolate brownies and Blondies. There is a recipe for homemade Whoopie Pie filled cookies. There is a fine recipe for Baklava, made with walnuts and spiked with orange zest. French-influenced offerings include Macaroons and Madeleines. A basic Biscotti recipe is presented and almond, anise and orange biscotti variations are explained. One could continue but you get the idea... Read, bake and enjoy. Make the recipes you feel comfortable with. Adventurous or experienced bakers will appreciate the more advanced recipes on offer.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars More Cookies December 31, 2011

By wogan TOP 50 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

There are almost 100 cookie recipes in this book. They, for the most part are the traditional old fashioned cookies that have been made for years. Recipes contained in it are: drop cookies, bar, rolled, cut-out and sliced, molded, stenciled and shaped, piped and twice baked and savory cookies.
There is advice on equipment needed for baking, basic ingredients and methods to make and mix. There are some photos that show how to do this and also decoration. Hints are given for such things as; freezing and baking in batches. There are pictures or diagrams for most of the cookies.

For the most part the recipes are the same as in many other cookie books, with the exception of the savory cookies; many of which are excellent.
There is a glossary and resources, 1 for Canada and others for the United States. Templates are included, that will have to be enlarged for the gingerbread house recipe. There is also an index.
This is a book that, if you do not have cookie recipe books, will come in handy, or if you want some of the very tempting savory cookies included in that chapter.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great cookies February 9, 2012

By Ohio Library Lady

Format:Hardcover

Wow! This book is worth it for the wonderful Chocolate Crackles cookie recipe alone -- layers of chocolate flavor, a couple of textures and a cut above any chocolate cookie I've ever had. The special quality is what I would expect from the Culinary Institute. I will try more cookies from this book with pleasure.