The French Cookie Book: Classic and Contemporary Recipes for Easy and Elegant Cookies [Hardcover]

Bruce Healy (Author), Paul Bugat (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 1994

One of America's premier pastry experts provides the first book devoted entirely to French cookies. From familiar to unusual creations, Healy offers thorough explanations of techniques and concise recipes for each cookie, as well as historical and personal anecdotes. Full-color photos; line drawings.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Healy, who runs a cooking school in Boulder, Colorado, and Bugat, a French patissier, are the authors of Mastering the Art of French Pastry (Barron, 1984). Now they focus on a more specific area, with dozens of recipes for cookies of all sorts. Recipes are organized by type of batter or dough, and each chapter opens with a lengthy, detailed introduction on techniques, ingredients, and even the science involved. In fact, the amount of detail is likely to be off-putting to many American home cooks, who generally like their cookie recipes fun and easy (not that Americans don't appreciate rich, delicate cookies, but chewy, crunchy, and gooey are bigger favorites). However, pastry chefs, culinary historians, and ambitious home bakers will find lots of information and little-known recipes here. Useful as a reference as well as a cookbook, this is suitable for larger pastry collections.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This hefty book has a delectable premise: to explore an array of French cookies made from fairly simple batters and doughs. Ingredients for most of these offerings are flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and nuts, in different combinations. To achieve certain shapes, special utensils (molds, a cookie press or pastry bag, and a midget ice cream scoop) are necessary items. And a bit of manual dexterity will also be helpful, as cookie chefs are called upon to roll, fold, and fill Russian cigarettes and ladies muffs. Dessert lovers fond of sumptuous sweets will find plenty of challenges here, while less adventurous cooks will discover a bevy of more straightforward recipes for special treats. Alice Joyce

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 511 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow and Company, Inc.; 1st edition (November 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688088333
• ISBN-13: 978-0688088330
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #464,600 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Lost World of Cookies, April 25, 2004

By 

jerry i h (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The French Cookie Book: Classic and Contemporary Recipes for Easy and Elegant Cookies (Hardcover)

The authors, sadly, seem to be correct: fine cookies are a mostly lost art, even in France. I have read descriptions of and seem pictures of displays of cookies in sweet shops in Paris about a century ago. They contain a bewildering display of massive amounts of cookies in endless varieties. Today, these displays are almost extinct. This book is probably your last chance to learn how to produce these cookies, both for the amateur home cook and the professional. The authors seem to have done quite a bit of research and trial-and-error, as most of the recipes seem to be revivals and recreations as opposed to a recording of how they were actually done in production. As a result, the recipes have much more in common than they would have if they were the actual, original recipes.

The key to all these different types is variation. In this book, there are many dozens of cookies, all very different in look and taste, yet all are based on only 7 basic recipes. With minor alterations in forming and flavors, you get a totally different cookie from the same recipe. Once you can make the basic recipe in a chapter, you can make all of the other cookies in the chapter, which is usually one or two dozen more. The seven types are: creamed sugar and butter, meringue, almond paste, sponge cake, tuiles, pâte sucrée, and puff pastry (yes, the authors expect you to make your own). I should also point out that these are traditional, fancy French patisserie; you will not find chocolate chips, oatmeal raisin cartwheels, or gingerbread men.

The book also has several unusual instructions. Some recipes require a resting period of a few hours or even overnight. Whipping egg whites requires that you go past the stiff peak stage, a no-no in my book. It also calls for baking on a piece of newspaper, and wetting down the paper after baking to get the cookies off. They may seem odd, but each one worked as advertised, and you are well advised to follow the directions to the letter; attempts to skip them and do it the "normal" way will meet with failure. You will also need a substantial collection of unusual and specialty baking pans which are hard to find, if you can find them at all. I also find the instructions for tempering chocolate to be inadequate, and used a standard method for tempering chocolate. In the chapter on pâte sucrée, one is instructed to use the "smear" method of dough, it specifies ammonium carbonate and not baking soda, and it states that if the temperature is above 75, you can not do these recipes (the same author remark applies to the chapter on puff pastry). It also instructs you to wet the baking pan before putting down the dough so it stays glued down. The chapter on puff pastry has a good recipe for using up scraps along with recommended recipes that can use it. It also has a good and reliable recipe for chocolate puff pastry.

There are several nice touches to the recipes. All have a specific list of equipment that you need; however, they only list the baking sheets and preparation, and not other equipment like food processors or blenders. Each recipe also has a specific amount of time that you can store the cookies; some will last a week, while others must be eaten the same day, while frozen, uncooked dough will last longer. The procedure of each recipe is also extremely detailed, and leaves nothing to chance; in this respect, this book is exemplary and would be a good template for anyone contemplating writing a cookbook. Some recipes take up 2 pages. Also worthy of note is that the recipe amounts are listed in weight, as well as volume.

The first part of each chapter also features a rather extensive primer on the techniques featured in the recipes for that chapter. The beginning of each chapter also features a very handy and useful to index to all of the recipes for that chapter. This book is a massive tome of 500 pages, including an impressive 90 pages just on references and detailed procedures. Here, for example, you will find a complete explanation of the brief and inadequate procedures of tempering chocolate in the recipes. The explanation and diagrams for making a cornet is hopelessly wrong. It has a rare explanation on the proper use of the pastry bag. It also calls for Vaseline as a pan coating (I would advise against this; try non-stick cooking spray with lecithin instead).

Best of all, every one of the cookies I tried were wonderful and worth the effort, and most were not harder to make than ordinary cookies from standard cookbooks; in some cases, they were easier since this book had the details missing from most recipes. This is a reliable and extensive resource for traditional, French cookies. In this book, I found several years worth of cookie baking (including several for that neglected cookie gun hidden at the back of the cabinet), and I recommend it highly.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars They're all here. And they're not as hard as you think!, December 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The French Cookie Book: Classic and Contemporary Recipes for Easy and Elegant Cookies (Hardcover)

I'm not very familiar with "real" French cookies, so I didn't know how hard or easy they'd be. It turns out that they'd probably have been a lot more work without this book. The author gives very clear line drawings exactly when they're most needed, tells you exactly what equipment you need up front, explains how to use the equipment you're probably not all that familiar with, and gives beautifully clear directions.

The only troubles with the book is that some of the recipes are much longer to make than is clear from the first reading (the dough softens quicker than I expected, needs to chill 10 times, etc.), and it's basically impossible to plan in advance how long one of these batches will take to put together. An indicator of this would really have helped a lot.

But they're SO good; it's amazing how much better cookies taste with just a little more time put into them and with a brilliant French chef's advice.

Bon appetit!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Keepsake!!, February 13, 2009

By 

Betty Junior "bettyjunior" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The French Cookie Book: Classic and Contemporary Recipes for Easy and Elegant Cookies (Hardcover)

This book is a must have for any and all avid cookie bakers!! I mean, it's like totally awesome. I learned so much. For example, I never knew how to get that really pretty golden color that the German and French cookies have. They teach you cookie baking techniques that I have absolutely never heard of. Many of them however, a bit tedious for what seems to be such a simple cookie. However, if you want to take show stopping, crowd pleasing cookies to any event, you need this book. If you want to "show off" baking skills that you know you don't really have (but you want everyone to think that you do), you need this book. And finally, if you just love the taste of high quality butter cookies, this is the cookie book for you. I'm so glad I found this book!! You won't be disappointed.