The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook: Recipes from the Classic Cookie to Mocha Chip Meringue Cake [Paperback]

Elinor Klivans (Author), Kirsten Strecker (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 13, 2007

One of the greatest pleasures of life is biting into a warm chocolate chip cookie straight from the oven. Now imagine it's Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding or Chocolate Chip Angel Cake with Chocolate Marshmallow Frosting. The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook offers 45 recipes that cover all the dessert basescookies, cakes, candies, brownies, tarts, frozen treats, and more. Chocolate chips saturate these recipes inside and out, so there's also a guide to the differences between these tiny indulgences. Using milk, semisweet, bittersweet, and white chocolate, Klivans encouragesreaders to discover their favorite chocolate chip recipes by, of course, tasting them all!

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Elinor Klivans is one of my favorite food writers. I love her recipes and I love her voice, which is that of a reliable, witty friend who lures you in with chocolate. I can never resist her." Nigella Lawson, Food Network host and author of Nigella Bites and Nigella Express

"This exceptional recipe [called Kitchen Sink Chocolate Chip Cookies], from a new book called The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook by Elinor Klivans, delivers the goods." Fort Worth Star Telegram, Feb 2008

"Need inspiration for that bag of chocolate chips in the cupboard? The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook, by Elinor Klivans, has dozens of temping ideas, from (no surprise) cookies to (surprise!) Swiss fitness bark." Chicago Tribune, March 2008 and reprinted in the Akron Beacon Journal in April 2008

"Mounds of morsels make these studded goodies truly magical." —Quick and Simple Magazine, March 4, 2008

"This exceptional recipe [Kitchen Sink Chocolate Chip Cookies] delivers the goods." —Fort Worth Star-Telegram, February 28, 2008

About the Author

Elinor Klivans is a cookbook author from Camden, Maine. Her books include Big Fat Cookies and Cupcakes!.

Kirsten Strecker is a New York-based photographer.

Product Details

• Paperback: 120 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; 1st edition (December 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811858049
• ISBN-13: 978-0811858045
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 8.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #998,939 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elinor Klivans is a notable cookbook author and food writer who has published articles for Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Cooking Pleasures, and the Washington Post, among others. A former pastry chef, she is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and lives in Camden, Maine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars another hit, January 11, 2008

By 

rnbaker (RI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook: Recipes from the Classic Cookie to Mocha Chip Meringue Cake (Paperback)

This is another great book from elinor klivans. All of her recipes have clear instructions and give excellent results. I have made the cookie dough cheesecake and hot brownie sundae - both easy and very delicious!!! One drawback is that the print of the ingredients list is very light and small - somewhat difficult to read and requires double checking.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not up to Chronicle's usual standards, April 3, 2008

By 

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

This review is from: The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook: Recipes from the Classic Cookie to Mocha Chip Meringue Cake (Paperback)

Elinor Klivans's The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook is absolutely lovely, including a decent number of color photographs, a clean layout, and easy-to-read recipes. The pages are thick and somewhat glossy, comparatively easy to keep clean. You'll find everything in here from cookies to bar cookies, muffins to pies, tarts and puddings to cakes, and of course, ice cream desserts. The table of contents names each and every recipe, while the index allows you to look up recipes by major ingredient. If you want to find that lovely banana cream pie with graham cracker crunch, you can look under 'bananas' in the index or the 'pies' chapter in the table of contents.

The first recipe we made was a cinnamon and chips chiffon cake. Unfortunately, the mini-chips sank straight through the batter during baking, stuck to the pan, and then largely stayed behind when the cake was removed, leaving the cake with holes and a thick layer of remaining chocolate chips at the top. We made banana-oatmeal chocolate chip cookies; every person who tried them agreed they would have been better with about half the chips in them.

The real kicker was the cookie dough cheesecake bars, however. In the photo, a full layer of cheesecake filling sits atop a graham-chocolate chip crust. Small blobs of crispy baked chocolate chip cookie dough obscure some of the filling, and lines of chocolate drizzle criss-cross the entire thing. In reality, the crust kept falling apart; the layer of cheesecake was minimal and difficult to taste amongst everything else; the 'cookie dough' was far too abundant and didn't come together as a dough; and if we'd actually included the drizzled chocolate, the result would have tasted overwhelmingly of chocolate. Our guess is that there should have been about twice as much cheesecake filling; the crust perhaps needed a bit more butter; and the cookie dough needed more liquid (a little milk? an egg?) and should have been halved.

The flavors are good, if unbalanced (the chocolate overwhelmed the other flavors in the recipes). The book is beautiful. Unfortunately, not a single recipe we tried came out great, and they tended to have noticeable 'issues.' As much as I love Chronicle cookbooks on the whole, this is not one of their best.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A cookbook sure to be popular among chocolate-loving library patrons, September 12, 2008

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook: Recipes from the Classic Cookie to Mocha Chip Meringue Cake (Paperback)

Chocolate chips are the author's passion, and The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook comes packed with ideas from bread puddings to cookies, cakes to candies and puddings. Add color photos throughout and recipes that separate mixing from baking time and streamline ingredients and you have a cookbook sure to be popular among chocolate-loving library patrons.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch