Customer Reviews

Martha Stewart's Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share (Martha Stewart Living Magazine)

5 star:		(126)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I love baking and I love cookies. That's what encouraged me to purchase this book and I'm so glad I did. There are around 175 recipes; I now have enough cookie recipes to last a lifetime and all the new possibilities of flavours makes my head spin.
I am so glad to see she made ANZAC cookies (something really popular in New Zealand and Australia). They are so devine and definately worth trying. I also love the Lemon-Apricot Sandwiches and the Chocolate Meringues. There are fantastic pictures to go along with them all (making them all the more tempting) and I can't wait to make more than the three I've done already. It's a good way to broaden your taste bud horizons because the variety is endless. I also find her instruction easy to follow which is so important.
If you are someone who loves baking and want to try some old favourites or new kinds, it's one of the better books I've seen. I love it and imagine it will be used many many times down the road.

I purchased Martha's special cookie magazine at Christmas a few years back, and it's simply falling apart now because I've made her cookies again and again. I was excited to see this book as a lot of my favorites from the cookie mag are included and the protective book allows me to keep these yummy recipes in one safe place. The photos are stunning - there's a pictorial table of contents (very unique!) based on things like 'soft and chewy' and 'crisp and crunchy' and there's even a delightful section in the back that shows you how to package your cookies for gifting. I simply can't wait to try the all the recipes!

I pre-ordered my book and just received it today. There is a colorful picture for every cookie recipe. I just baked (pictured on the front cover) chewy chocolate Gingerbread cookies and the smell, texture and taste came out sensational. Honestly this is a book worth buying.

Twice since I bought this book I have had large parties (150+) where it just made sense to put out large quantities of cookies for the marauding hordes. I have made 39 of the recipes in this book and frozen the raw dough of all of them. I loved 35 of them, I ADORED 3 of them (lime melt aways, carrot cake cookies w/cream cheese filling and OMG! the cashew caramel chewies) and been disappointed in one (peanut butter).
This book is so good because the book is divided into sections (like Chewy, Cakey, Nutty, etc,) and there is a photo of every cookie. No guesswork! I highly recommend it.

When I saw this "new" book, I was very excited because I have the Holiday/Christmas Cookie Book from a few years ago and I thought "Awesome, more cookie recipes!" Avast, no...as another reviewer has pointed out, it basically is a re-hash of the Holiday/Christmas Cookie Book, and recipes that are available on the Martha Stewart website.
:o(

This collection of recipes from Martha Stewart Living is beautifully organized by texture & type and covers the gamut from the most basic of cookies to some of the most adventurous. it is not by martha herself which I found refreshing since it doesn't pre-suppose you have a kitchen full of exotic ingredients and expensive equipment. Even the most daring cookies here can be attempted by a modestly equipped cook. Cookies with similar basic ingredients & textures are grouped together to illustrate how easy it can be to change up a basic recipe and trick it out for a more sophisticated taste-bud or occasion. The old standby's are here as well. All the recipes rely on good wholesome ingredients and very basic preparation methods but they add a flare of imagination. The cookie on the cover is a terrific example - chocolate filled chewy gingerbread! Yum! Inside are other similarly invetnive recipes such as Cream Cheese Shortbreads, Chocolate Malt Sandwhich cookies and more.

The best part of this book is that EVERY cookie is photographed so that you can see exactly how they are intended to look when finished. In addition, the instructions are free from frothy observations or self-congratulatory rhetoric that mar some her other publications. She did not write this book and it shows. Her editors wrote it. And that my friends, is a GOOD THING when it comes to a book such as this which is intended to be the only cookie book you'll ever need. I have already bought several as gifts for young mothers I know and dedicated cookie baking pals. This is really the last cookie book I will ever need. It will take me years to run out of recipes to try from this collection.

I checked this book out at my local library and made a few cookies before ordering it. (I have too many cookbooks as it is). The recipes and photos are divine! The only complaint I have about this book is that I wish the publisher had included measurements by weight. Most home cooks use volume to measure out ingredients, but those of us who use weight have a hard and tedious time going back to volume. That being said, I want to tell you that the most delicious Palmiers and Chocolate Crackle cookies I have ever eaten, came out of this book. During Christmas I bake LOTS of cookies to give away, and this year I received many compliments on the cookies from this book. So next year I will use some of the same recipes plus a few new ones. Besides the great photos and recipes, the Table of Contents is a pictorial of the 175 cookie recipes. All the cookies are right there, in front of you to choose from without having to peruse the entire book to choose what you are going to bake. This to me is a great time saver. The cookies are divided into the following sections:
Light and Delicate
Soft and Chewy
Crumbly and Sandy
Chunky and Nutty
Cakey and Tender
Crisp and Crunchy
Rich and Dense
Tools and Techniques
Packaging and Giving
Sources
This is a great book to own, but be careful.....those cookies have a way of jumping out of the page, make you bake them, and then insist on following you everywhere by sitting on your hips, thighs, belly, etc. If you are not a cookie monster now, you will be one if you have this book.

Martha Stewart Living has done it again!! After watching Cookie Week on Martha Stewarts daytime show a few weeks ago I couldn't resist ordering this cookie cookbook. It arrived a few days later and I now have a new hobby. I make a cookie recipe a week and just love it!! So far I've tried the Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies, The Chocolate Thumbprints and the Macaroons. Every recipe is easy to follow and make and the results are amazing. I highly recommend this for your cookbook shelf and even as gifts for birthdays and holidays. You could even bake a batch and make it a package gift of cookies and cookbook!!!

I'm often intimidated the long, difficult recipes that appear in Martha's magazine -- and there ARE a few of those in this book -- but most of these recipes can be made with a reasonable amount of effort. The focus is on excellent ingredients, thoughtful flavor combinations, and precise instructions. I've made three of the recipes so far and found them to be simply brilliant! For example, in the Fruit and Nut Cookies, Martha calls for coarse salt instead of ordinary table salt. It sounded crazy to me to put coarse salt into cookies, but I gave Martha the benefit of the doubt and used fleur de sel. WOW. The little unexpected hits of salt with those lush chunks of dried apricot took those cookies to a new level of Delicious. Another recipe I made was a chocolate shortbread thumbprint cookie filled with sweetened cream cheese and minced fresh strawberries. Those were positively mind-blowing and disappeared almost immediately. This book is well worth its price.

The organization, pictures, and ideas are great. The writing and instructions are simple and easy to follow.I love that there are a huge variety of cookies, so if you're someone who likes to experiment and try something new this is perfect. I saw a lot of cookies I'd never even heard of or thought of making, so my housemates and I always have fun trying a new one every week.

My only objection is that the cookies actually aren't very tasty. A lot of them are floury, or a little bland, or sometimes too chocolatey. I don't really know what it is, but most cookies I've tried comes up short somehow. For example, the Lime Meltaways aren't quite lime-y enough, though you can easily adjust by putting in more zest or juice next time. Even simple cookies, like chocolate chip or oatmeal, aren't as good as the ones based on recipes from Joy of Cooking or Betty Crocker. My friend thinks it might be because she doesn't use enough butter and sugar, but I'm not totally sure. There's a food blog out there that tries every single recipe in this cookie book - I can't recall the name of it, but the blogger seemed to also be dissatisfied by some of the recipes too.

This cookbook is definitely best for holidays where you'd want to serve a huge variety of cookies and have fun with decor or impressing your friends. But if these cookies were sold at a bakery, I might not be a returning customer. They're not bad, just not good enough.