King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion: The Essential Cookie Cookbook

by King Arthur Flour

Overview

Drawing on the same commitment to the home-baking community that has earned them hundreds of thousands of dedicated followers, the bakers at King Arthur Flour guide you through hundreds of recipes, revealing the secrets to making your own mouthwatering cookies for any occasion.

The bakers begin by singling out the "Nine Essential Cookies" and variations that reflect a variety of tastes, textures, and ingredients:

brownies

sugar cookies

chocolate chip cookies

shortbread

oatmeal cookies

peanut butter cookies

molasses-ginger cookies

biscotti

decorated cookies here in one place.

The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion includes full chapters on drop cookies, roll-out cookies, shaped cookies, batter cookies, no-bake cookies, and bars and find a thorough overview of the essential ingredients of cookie baking, explaining the chemistry of flours and grains, leavens, sweeteners, fats, dairy products, flavorings, and the science of how these ingredients work and variations; measuring and weighing ingredients; even advice on high-altitude baking. Recipes are enhanced with sidebars providing hints, shortcuts, troubleshooting advice, and recipe lore. And each recipe is accompanied by a complete nutritional analysis. Illustrations throughout the book provide clear step-by-step instructions that take the mystery out of such baking terms as "creaming," "soft-ball stage," and "folding." Finally, a comprehensive illustrated chapter describes the essential line black & white illustrations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780881506594
Publisher:	Countryman Press, The
Publication date:	11/28/2004
Series:	King Arthur Flour Cookbooks Series
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	280,789
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 10.30(h) x 1.90(d)

About the Author

King Arthur Flour is the largest single educator of bakers in the world. Employee owned since 1996, the company conducts a yearly national baking class tour that has provided free baking classes to many thousands of bakers across the U.S. The company also publishes The Baking Sheet, a newsletter of recipes and baking information. The Baker's Catalogue, a wholly owned subsidiary, sponsors an online baking forum, The Baking Circle, on its parent company's Web site. The company's 2003 release, The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion,
was selected as one of the best cookbooks of the year by Food &
Wine, People, and many other national publications. Other books by King Arthur Flour include The Original King Arthur Flour Cookbook, The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, and King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking.

All the bakers at King Arthur Flour work from their 12-sided post-and-beam headquarters in Norwich , Vermont.

Editorial Reviews

The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, published in 2003, was selected as one of Food & Wine's 10 Best Cookbooks of the Year and garnered top cookbook honors at the 2004 James Beard Foundation Gala. Now the 200-year-old baking company hits us with an irresistible follow-up: a comprehensive guide to the art and science of making cookies. Professional wisdom on a homemade treat.

I feel about the King Arthur people the way so many cooks do about Cook's Illustrated magazine: what they say goes. So even if the cookies in THE KING ARTHUR FLOUR COOKIE COMPANION (Countryman, $29.95) aren't startlingly original, I know I'll be given just the right advice when I set out to make them and I won't have a worry from start to finish. And, in fact, I do want to make the book's brown sugar almond crisps (thin sugar cookies with roasted salted almonds pressed into the top), its English digestive biscuits with whole-wheat flour and make-in-a-flash chocolate chip cookie bars, inspired by Ruth Wakefield. You remember Mrs. Wakefield? Proprietor of that little Massachusetts restaurant called the Toll House? Whatever you may have been thinking, Massachusetts really can unite the country again.
— The New York Times Book Review

Corby Kummer

Home bakers cross some kind of line when we make our first order from Vermont's King Arthur Flour. Suddenly, supermarket staples are no longer good enough for us, and we're ordering special yeast, bread-base mix-ins, and more. Last year King Arthur came out with its Baking Companion cookbook, and now just in time for the holidays, there's The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion (Countryman Press, $30).

The Companions are not small books, and if you've already got the Baking Companion, you might want to think twice about the Cookie Companion. But if you live for an annual cookie exchange, this is your book.

Some of the recipes, such as the delicate Vanilla Dreams, require special ingredients (baker's ammonnia for the Dreams), which are available from King Arthur, naturally. But most don't.

I've made plenty of molasses cookies, but King Arthur's recipe was easy and fast, and produced a light, sweet if not exactly spicy treat. Bakers can choose between a soft and crisp recipe, a nice nod to different tastes.

Homemade graham crackers are not something I've ever contemplated baking before seeing the recipe here. They were fun and easy to make, but lacked the smooth, sweet taste of the grocery-store brands. I won't make them again.

I have more luck with a variety of Christmas cookies. One simple recipe allows the baker to make chocolate, vanilla and fruit-flavored doughs (that last uses dry Jello to flavor and color). Once the basic doughs are ready, they can be shaped into any number of swirls, stripes and checkerboards, and my officemates were quite impressed. Another beautiful-looking treat, the stained-glass cookies shown at the top of this story, were exquisite enough to be ornaments. Unfortunately, people tended to eat the cookie part and throw away the hard-candy center, which tasted fine, but wasn't what they expected in a cookie.

Camelot may have existed for only one brief shining moment, but in the world of baking, King Arthur still reigns supreme.
— MSNBC.com

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper