Customer Reviews

Cookies: 1,001 Mouthwatering Recipes From Around the World

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

 

 

This book is both fascinating and frustrating. It is not for the beginner, but experienced cookie bakers will find hundreds of interesting cookies, mostly Italian. Despite the Reader's Digest moniker, it is not a collection of All-American cookies, so take the sub-title of this book seriously.

If you are learning how to bake cookies, you should probably avoid this book. There is absolutely no information on ingredients, equipment, or techniques, nor are there hints or suggestions in the individual recipes. The instructions can generously be described as terse and unhelpful. There is no informational or educational information on making cookies.

If you know your way around a cookie sheet, there are more cookie recipes that you will want to try in this book than all the rest of your cookie books combined. I found literally hundreds of cookies that I wanted to try. The lion's share of recipes are rare, hard to find Italian ones; they are significantly different from american, british, french, german, austrian, etc. cookies (the editorial page lists Florence, Italy as the progenitor). On the down side, many of the recipes require adjustment; I found problems like: doughs that were crumbly and never really came together, too much spreading, seemingly under-baked cookies, dry and crumbly cookies, etc. The recipe titles were also a problem; I am reasonably sure that many of these cookies have popular or traditional names, but an awful lot of them have been given generic names, e.g. "date cookies" or "lime and sunflower seed cookies". I suspect that most problems relate to variable methods of flour measurement; Europeans, like Italians, measure flour by weight, but all recipes in this book list flour by volume in cups. Here, I suspect that the recipes were edited at the word processor and not in the kitchen.

People who already know how to bake cookies will find, in this veritable encyclopedia of mostly Italian cookies, a lifetime of appealing cookie recipes.

This is a great cookie book and I should know because I am a "cookie monster" and love cookie cookbooks! Wide variety, beautifully presented. Like all Reader's Digest books, this is a good quality book - well done in every respect. It is a large book but not "hulking" as the editorial reviewer said; it's just one of the large-size cookbooks of which there are many. This one is not freakish or anything, just large because there are so many great recipes. Terrific photographs and instructions.Easy to read. Some reviewers of its counterpart,Cakes, said the print was too small to read but that is NOT true at all. Both of these books are VERY easy to read - unless you require extremely Large Print books or something. These are just normal size print. A great buy for cookbook or cookie lovers!

Has some great ideas for different cookies, but not all the recipes work and you need to know how to fix or change the recipes for the cookies in order to get an actual cookie you can eat. Some of the recipes for the cookies are too crumbly, some spread too much, the temperature is wrong in some, not enough flour in some recipes, cook time is too long, etc... Editing for this book definitely not done in the kitchen. Wouldn't recommend this book if you are looking to just bake a cookie and take it somewhere. Need to know your way around the kitchen to get these recipes to work.

Great collection of recipes. Didn't even know Reader's Digest had published this. Consider it a fantastic find for me and my personal collection. The recipes are great as reference material and they are sorted according to type (meringues and macaroons, sugar, chocolate, etc.). Haven't had a chance to try more than 2 or 3 of them yet but, all I've tried have turned out well. Reading and scanning the book's contents has also introduced me to some recipes from other countries that I had heard of and had been dying to try out.

I have spent a lot of time at home lately after an injury that occurred while I was mopping my place of business, Uncle Joey's Mashed Potato Bar.

I needed a hobby that I could do around the house while I recovered. I decided that baking would be my new hobby, and cookies would be what I would specialize in. With the holidays coming up, how could I resist?

Well, this book is wonderful, it taught me how to make all the holiday cookies that my mother and grandmother used to make.

Do I miss working at my place of business? Yes...

Will I return when I recover? Maybe not. I just might become a professional cookie maker after reading this. WATCH OUT MRS. FIELDS! Musicalgenius Jeremy's Cookie Hut might be the new hotspot in the food court!

And when my new cookie business takes off, then I can finally take over the world.