Americans spend over $550 million annually on Oreos, some indication of our cookie infatuation. Meeting that passion head-on, The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion offers 400-plus recipes for almost every cookie under the sun--from traditional favorites like oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies (13 recipes including the soft and crisp kinds, plus 11 variations, such a Orange-Pistachio Milk Chocolate Chippers); to global treats like shortbread, tuiles, springerle, and biscotti; to all kinds of bars and soft bites such as brownies, Whoopie Pies, and Hot and Sweet Ginger Squares.

The Cookie Companion is in the King Arthur tradition, which means that it's a teaching cookbook--one overflowing with tips, pointers, lore, and other compelling information. Thus, for example, the introduction to Special Roll-Out Sugar Cookies informs readers that thorough dough-rolling creates thin, snapping-crisp cookies, but roll the dough a bit thicker, and "you’ve got crunchy." Their no-detail-too-small introductory basics are greatly aided by the tour-de-force illustrations of Laura Hartman Maestro. For example, a box on bar-cookie cutting shows readers the five basic size configurations, depending on pan dimensions. Bakers who have routinely paused, knife in hand, before a pan of just-baked brownies, trying to decide how to end up with, say, 24 large squares, won't, following the illustrations, do so again. A section on cookie decoration is equally definitive, as is a final chapter on ingredients, which offers, for example, a full discussion of sugars, plus asides like "Is Splenda the Answer to Low-Calorie Baking" (maybe) and "Can I Substitute a Liquid Sweetener for a Dry One to Make My Cookies Sifter?" (sometimes, but never measurement for measurement).

With "Create-a-Cookie," a section that focuses on manipulating basic dough mixtures to make checkerboard and pinwheel cookies among others; recipes for glazes, icings, dips and finishes; illustrated equipment profiles; plus color photos that depict the cookies in all their edible glory, the book is, simply, a must-have for cookie bakers everywhere. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
The holidays may be the only time of year when store-bought cookies just aren’t special enough to share with friends and family. Even novice bakers are willing to move beyond their comfort zone and try something festive. Now, they don’t have to go it alone. The King Arthur Flour Company, the largest educator of bakers in the world, has provided a thorough how-to on cookies that will appeal to beginners and advanced bakers alike. The company’s bakers have already won The James Beard Foundation KitchenAid Cookbook of the Year award for the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion (2003), and now they set their sights on the cookie. The bakers have singled out eight essential cookies—chocolate chip, oatmeal, sugar, peanut butter, shortbread, molasses-ginger, brownies and biscotti—and offer both traditional and exotic recipes, as well as variations and decorating tips to allow for bursts of inspiration. Of course all baking starts with the basics, so the bakers begin by providing information on measuring, baking pans, cookie cutters, ingredients, tools and flour, and they end with a chapter on The Finishing Touch, where they dissect icing. With mouth-watering photos as motivation and drawings to offer assistance, this cookbook is a must for any serious baker. It leaves no cookie unturned.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
America's favorite bakers turn a fresh eye on cookies—everyone's favorite homemade treat. 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 From whoopie pies to ladyfingers, it's all 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 squares. You'll find complete instructions for making cookie icings, fillings, and dips. You'll 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 together. You'll also learn tips on substitutions 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 baking tools you'll want to have on hand. 150 line black & white illustrations.

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 a newsletter of recipes and baking information, The Baking Sheet. 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. All the bakers at King Arthur Flour work from their 12-sided post-and-beam headquarters in Norwich, Vermont.

FROM OUR EDITORS

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.

ANNOTATION

Selected one of "The Best of the Best" by the editors of Food & Wine Magazine

FROM THE PUBLISHER

America's favorite bakers turn a fresh eye on cookies—everyone's favorite homemade treat.

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 more than 400 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 cookiesFrom whoopie pies to ladyfingers, it's all 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 squares.

You'll find complete instructions for making cookie icings, fillings, and dips. You'll 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 together. You'll also learn tips on substitutions 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 baking tools you'll want to have on hand.

FROM THE CRITICS

Corby Kummer - The New York Times Book Review

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.

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper - MSNBC.com

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.