Dorie's Cookies

Unlike a lot of the reviews already posted here, I was not already a Dorie fan when I purchased this book. I had heard of her and noticed this book was getting a lot of press in all the foodie sources I follow, and as a lover of cookies, I preordered the book. For some reason, I had assumed that it would be more like a "cookie bible"... a source of standard, well loved cookies from all over the world. Not at all! Dorie's Cookies is more like a Senior Thesis on cookies- like Dorie sat around in her kitchen trying out recipes that turn traditional cookie making on it's head. The chapter on Cocktail Cookies was really intriguing to me, and since Thanksgiving was coming up, I thought if I tried out some of those recipes they'd be great at the appetizer table.So far, I've tried 4 recipes from the book. Frankly, I've found all the recipes a bit fussy and sort of delicate. I'm used to baking things like Tollhouse Cookies, where my big secret is to double the chocolate chips and cram tons of other things in there to change it up, like pretzels or corn flakes and no matter what I do to them I can't ruin them. So I found the recipes I tried here a bit more precious and exacting than I was used to. I started with the Sesame Sea Salt Cookies, which were kind of like a pie crust where butter was cut into the flour. I found I needed to add 2T more butter to get the dough to come together properly, and if you accidentally leave the dough for any time more than 1 hour in the freezer, you will not be able to cut it without getting cracked cookies. That said, they turned out amazing and were devoured from everyone at our Thanksgiving party, from my 8 year year old to the grandparents. They are not salty, not sweet, tiny and dainty and the entire batch fit in my smallest Tupperware container.I then made the Puffed Grain and Miso Cookies. These didn't work out at all and we ended up throwing these out without bringing them to the party. I bought a ton of new ingredients that I had to search out from 3 different locations for these cookies- puffed rice, goji berries, puffed barley, and brown rice syrup. Perhaps it was the brand of miso or rice syrup that I used but the flavor of these was just too strong. My kids immediately hated them, my husband, who was drinking a beer at the time, started out liking them with his beer but after a few also found the flavor just too much.Then, because I needed to have some chocolate represented, I made the famous World Peace Cookie. In the intro to this recipe Dorie tells you the dough is kind of fussy, and she was right. Yes, the flavor was wonderful- super deep and lingering chocolate, but cutting the cookies from the logs was a challenge and next time I just might make this dough into a simple drop cookie and see what happens.A few days later, I made the Snow Topped Brownie Drops which was fairly easy and super delicious. However, the picture shows gorgeous bright white cookies and as thickly as we rolled our cookies in confectioner's sugar, our cookies did not look like that. Our sugar had melted into a pretty ghostly, thin covering. Still worth eating and making again.So of the 4 cookies I made, 1 was a complete dud, and 2 were pretty fussy to make, and 1 came out slightly visually disappointing. I still give this book 5 stars because I find that rather than find the Ultimate Snickerdoodle recipe, I'd rather flip through this book and find something completely new and surprising. A lot of the recipes in this book make relatively small batches of small, dainty cookies. So it's a bit of jumping through hoops to get like 25 cookies, as opposed to 1 bowl and a few minutes of mixing time to get 4 dozen Tollhouse cookies that you can just slop onto the sheets after no freezing time. To me, this is more about the experience of making and experimenting than it is about churning out a huge batch of the old standard, reliable recipe. It's like baking an interesting recipe for a chic dinner party rather than mass quantities of something expected for the school bake sale. I'm plotting what I will make next and that anticipation is part of the pleasure of this book.Finally, I am seeing a lot of people critiquing the book's layout and I find it doesn't bother me at all. I love seeing a full page picture of the cookie I am making. To me, it's part of the pleasure of browsing through this beautiful book. I don't find it such an inconvenience to have to turn the page while making the cookie- it's not the hardest thing to do.

This is an interesting book on cookies. It explains different techniques and why you should use them. It is also very precise in the specific ingredients to use to get the best outcome. I look forward to trying some of the recipes.

I thought to myself, All I need is a cookbook full of COOKIE recipes!!! Don't I have enough of those?!? But I was convinced by the food 52 piglet tournament of cookbooks this year to purchase this. As it made it's way through the competition home cooks, chiefs and bakers alike raved about it. First of all, IT'S HUGE!. 517 pages but I knew that however, it's not obvious until you hold it in your hands. dang.... it's heavy. Anyway, I've had it for about two weeks and this weekend I dove in sugar and flour flying to make three recipes.Dorie gives lots of instruction about technique, tools and ingredients. I really appreciate this. I don't think I've come across this except in a Cook Illustrated cookbook before. Here's what I've notice in the three recipes I made and it made all the difference in the world on how the cookies came out. First butter and eggs must be a room temperature. This was new for me. I don't believe I've been taught this when making cookies in the past. Secondly, salt is add NOT with the dry ingredients but with the wet. Third, all dry ingredients are added at once and NOT over mixed.... but just until no more flour is visible. Brilliant! Everything was baked at 350.First up was the Peanut Butter Change-ups: Love this twist on the classic peanut butter cookie. It truly is a cross between a shortbread and peanut butter classic cookie. No hatch marks with the fork required. The surprise ingredient was the addition of nutmeg. Subtle but adds a really nice pop of this spice. My husband is going to go crazy for this cookie:)Secondly was Crash-O-Cookie: This was a basic raisin, oatmeal, chocolate cookie however, it uses MILK chocolate which makes it tastes amazing. very easy to mix together and bake. Even though raisin were moist, Dorie instructs to soak in hot water while to whip up the batter. I'll be making these again!Lastly, Chocolate-Oatmeal Biscoff Cookies: I hadn't a clue as to what Biscoff was before this recipe. I had to google it to at least see a picture of the jar. It's a spread made of coco, cookies and probably sugar. Dorie insisted that you use that brand - Biscoff because of it's unique taste. These cookies come together quickly but you have to refrigerate the dough for 2hours. Also, there's not a lot of flour in these. So I roll them out into about 1" ball and press with the bottom of a 1c measuring cup. I didn't except them to spread but they did. I essentially got 25 cookies when I should have gotten 50. Okay so my first effort was not uniform. The cookies are delicious and I've made a note for the next time I make them.I was impressed with these recipes and there are SOOOO MANY more to try. I haven't even mentioned the savory cookie recipes she has in there too. I've heard those are not to be missed. Highly recommend for those that bake all the time or that don't even own one cookie cookbook. A classic that will long out live all my future baking days I'm sure.

Photos, instructions, photos are great.

a Dorie arrasou nesse livro, também tem uma introdução falando sobre ingredientes e equipamentos; cada receita tem uma historinha falando sobre a receita, algumas tem dicas de substituições, as fotos são lindas; é um livro robusto, bem dividido.não sei se pra quem tá começando é o mais indicado.mas sei que é um livro que vale muito a pena, se vc ama cookie é claro.

Soy fan de Dorie, me gustan sus recetas tanto dulces como saladas. Sus “world peace cookies” son una absoluta delicia y muy sencillas de hacer. Recomiendo mucho el libro. El único detalle es que lo pedí con un vendedor externo, y el libro llegó un poquito roto de la pasta. Me lo quedé de todas formas, pero por el costo creo que tuvieron que enviarme una copia íntegra.

Ho ordinato il libro, con la speranza di vedere tante ricette di biscotti, una totale delusione. Non mi piace e costa troppo per delle ricette che trovi su Internet, fantasia zero. Consiglio libri di veri pasticeri.

There are some great recipes in this book, I look forward to trying some of them.

A tons of cookie recipes, unfortunately, half of them a total baking disaster. As an accomplished home cook, I firmly believe that no bad cook exist, only bad recipes...well, this is the case with half of these ones. Either the consistency of the raw pastry or that of the end product is a total flop in half of them. If you like to experiment, don't hesitate.