The Perfect Cookie: Your Ultimate Guide to Foolproof Cookies, Brownies & Bars

by America's Test Kitchen (Editor)

Overview

Featured in the New York Times book Review, Real Simple, Huffington Post, Forbes, Parade, and Southern Living. Portable, fun to make, easy to gift, and open to countless flavor variations, cookies are everyone's favorite sweet treat. America's Test Kitchen has years of experience making the very best cookies; in The Perfect Cookie, the test kitchen has collected all of that knowledge in one place for the definitive guide to cookie baking. This comprehensive anthology includes kitchen-tested, never-fail recipes for cookie jar classics, in addition to recipes for rich and chewy brownies, fruit-and-crumble-topped bars, quick no-bake confections, holiday favorites, and even candies like fudge and truffles; they're all included in this gorgeous package, with a full-page photo showing off every recipe. And, as only the test kitchen can, there are tips and tricks throughout the chapters, as well as an introductory section to get you started with insight on everything from what makes a cookie chewy versus crispy to what baking sheet you should buy so that your cookies bake evenly every time. The result? The perfect cookie.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781940352954
Publisher:	America's Test Kitchen
Publication date:	08/29/2017
Series:	Perfect Baking Cookbooks
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	38,367
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

America’s Test Kitchen is well-known for its top-rated television shows with more than 4 million weekly public television viewers, bestselling cookbooks, magazines, websites, and cooking school. The highly reputable and recognizable brands of America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Illustrated, and Cook’s Country are the work of over 60 passionate chefs based in Boston, Massachusetts, who put ingredients, cookware, equipment, and recipes through objective, rigorous testing to identify the very best. Discover, learn, and expand your cooking repertoire with Julia Collin Davison, Bridget Lancaster, Jack Bishop, Dan Souza, Lisa McManus, Tucker Shaw, Bryan Roof, and our fabulous team of test cooks!

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/03/2017
This latest book from ATK is an irresistible offering of 250 cookie, brownie, and bar recipes. A read through the comprehensive techniques section will inspire new and seasoned bakers alike. The various types of cookie-mixing methods explained here, including creaming and reverse creaming, are themselves worth the price of the book. Recipes are exacting and can sometimes feel overly complicated, although there are simple recipes throughout, including for lemon sour-cream cookies, coffee-toffee cookies, and old-fashioned applesauce cookies. A chapter on rolled, shaped, and pressed cookies features unusual combinations of flavor and texture, such as hazelnut lemon curd thumbprints, fudgy peanut butter mousse cups, and cornmeal orange cookies. Twenty types of brownies and blondies, including fudge brownies and butterscotch meringue bars, should satisfy many tastes. There is a terrific selection of bar cookie recipes, which include reliable recipes for classics such as lemon bars and cheesecake bars, as well as for the more innovative pear-cherry streusel bars and white-chocolate raspberry bars. This book wouldn’t be complete without a chapter on Christmas cookies, and the recipes included here do not disappoint: old favorites such as linzer sandwich cookies are well represented, along with new inventions such as eggnog snickerdoodles. This is a must-have for cookie lovers. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"There are chapters devoted to drop cookies, bar cookies, sandwich cookies, gluten-free cookies and, yes, Christmas cookies. Not only are there plenty of lovely color photographs to help you out and make you hungrier than you already were but there are also how-to guides, shaping instructions, tutorials on candymaking and making puff pastry dough, tempering chocolate and more." - "10 of the best new cookbooks of 2017." Los Angeles Times

“The Perfect Cookie . . . is, in a word, perfect. This is an important and substantial cookbook . . . If you love cookies, but have been a tad shy to bake on your own, all your fears will be dissipated. This is one book you can use for years with magnificently happy results.” — Huffpost 

"...your one-stop shop for cookies." - "Our 6 Favorite August Cookbooks." RealSimple.com

From the Publisher

★ 08/01/2017
The editors at America's Test Kitchen pack decades of baking experience into this impressive volume of 250 recipes for cookies, brownies, bars, and no-bake confections. Here you'll find only the best, as chocolate crinkle cookies, ultranutty pecan bars, rocky road bark, and other treats have all survived scrupulous testing. American favorites are predominantly represented, but there are plenty of international cookies to enliven everyday and holiday cookie plates. It's wonderfully convenient to have these recipes in one place, though there is some overlap with The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book and The Cook's Illustrated Baking Book. Supplement this workhorse collection with Dorie Greenspan's Dorie's Cookies and you'll be set for years. VERDICT Whether you're a fan of crisp or chewy cookies (or crisp-chewy cookies), you'll find a wealth of keeper recipes within these pages.

Library Journal