Favorite Cookies: More Than 40 Recipes for Iconic Treats
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About this ebook
This comprehensive collection of over three dozen cookie recipes provides all the much-loved classics, along with tips and variations on how to make them unique. The recipes are simple enough to be understood by beginning bakers and share a timeless quality that will make them cherished by cooks of all levels. The recipes are the type home cooks will return to again and again.
Whether you’re an avid baker or a novice, the experts at the Williams-Sonoma Test Kitchen have you covered. Inside this beautifully photographed volume, you’ll find recipes for all types of cookies, including drop cookies, holiday cookies, sandwich cookies, and bar cookies. Step-by-step photos and instructions illustrate how to roll out dough, cut cookie shapes, and decorate with panache.
Drop Cookies: Chocolate Chip; Peanut Butter; Oatmeal Raisin; Cowboy; Coconut, Butterscotch, and Macadamia; Chocolate Crinkle.
Holiday Cookies/Gift Giving Cookies: Sugar; Ginger-Molasses; Gingerbread People; Spritz; Snickerdoodle; Candy Cane; Peppermint Bark; Thumbprints; Meringues; Florentines; Almond Crescent.
Sandwich Cookies: Chocolate Pretzel-Peanut Butter; Lemon Cream; Homemade Oreos
Bars: Blondie; Toffee Triangles; Peanut Butter Rice Crispy Brownie Bars; 7-Layer Bar; S’mores Brownies; Orange Creamsicle.
The Williams-Sonoma Test Kitchen
Since its founding by Chuck Williams in 1956, the Williams Sonoma brand has been bringing people together around food. Williams Sonoma is a leading specialty retailer of high-quality products for the kitchen and home, providing world-class service and an engaging customer experience. The Williams Sonoma Test Kitchen spearheads the development of culinary content for the brand’s catalog, website, blog, social media programs, cooking schools, and special events.
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Favorite Cookies - The Williams-Sonoma Test Kitchen
COOKIE BASICS
What could be better than the aroma of freshly baked cookies coming from the oven? Perhaps only the first sublime bite of a warm chocolate chip cookie with its melted chocolate bits—a moment of pure delight. Cookies evoke so many wonderful emotions; they fill your kitchen with the aromas of childhood and the memories of holiday time. Nothing is more satisfying than dipping a hand into the cookie jar to instantly indulge your sweet tooth.
The recipes in this book begin with our favorite selection of classic and versatile drop cookies, perfect for any day of the year. Serving these fresh from the oven, like Salted-Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies (see recipe), will elicit instant smiles. Next come recipes for indulgent bars and tender, buttery sandwich cookies that are all wonderful alternatives to serving cupcakes at parties. Try your hand at Homemade Oreos (see recipe) for kids (or kids at heart). And finally, 17 festive holiday cookies bring to life dreams of peppermint, gingerbread, rugelach, and a winter wonderland of flavors.
The secret to successful cookie baking starts with the dough, so in the next few pages we cover everything from equipment essentials to rolling, cutting, and shaping dough. Cookie decorating is easily doable with a few basic tools and our handy how-tos. Many of these recipes are simple enough to make that you can enlist little hands to help. And don’t miss our tips for proper storing and beautiful gift giving.
We celebrate the cookie and all of its different textures—crispy, chewy, or downright gooey—and encourage you to experiment with your favorite flavors and ideas for mix-ins. You’ll find exciting flavor variations throughout, from Matcha Shortbread Cookies (see recipe) to Honey & Rose Water Mexican Wedding Cookies (see recipe). Perhaps you’ll find a new favorite or develop a new holiday tradition. Get creative with whatever shapes, colors, and designs you like. Just don’t forget a big glass of cold milk.
COOKIE BASICS
There are several types of cookies—dropped, rolled and cut, pressed, and sandwich—and we love them all. While many do not require any special tools, some might need a specific pan or piece of equipment.
Tool Kit
In addition to the standard suite of baking tools (mixing bowls, measuring cups, and baking sheets), it’s good to have a few other items on hand before you get started.
An electric stand mixer is handy for mixing dough, and wire cooling racks are essential for allowing air circulation so that cookies cool quickly and evenly.
Use parchment paper or silicone baking mats to line baking sheets to prevent dough from sticking. And, of course, a rolling pin and a selection of cookie cutters are a must for making Christmas cookies!
For decorating, be sure to have an offset spatula (also called a palette knife) on hand, as well as a piping bag and an array of tips (see recipe for detailed decorating instructions). Gather several small bowls (dishwasher-safe materials make cleanup a breeze) for mixing icing. Small paintbrushes to spread icing, paint designs, and brush on luster dust are also useful.
You’ll need a cookie press for our Spritz Cookies (see recipe) and a special madeleine pan for Chuck Williams’ own recipe for madeleines (see recipe).
Ingredients
Most cookie recipes use the same stockpile of ingredients: butter, flour, sugar, eggs, and vanilla or other flavorings. Using the highest quality of each yields the best results. Start out with all your ingredients at room temperature, unless the recipe instructs otherwise. The temperature of the butter is important: if the butter is too cold, it will not fluff up or cream properly, and if it is too warm or nearly melted, it will be too thin to fluff up at all.
Measuring
Professional bakers use a kitchen scale to measure dry ingredients, but most home cooks use cups and spoons. Whichever method you use, be sure to measure precisely and use the same method for the entire recipe.
Serving
From a cookie jar brimming with chocolate chip cookies to a vintage tray stacked with brownies, presentation ideas are endless. Keep in mind that some recipes have specific serving instructions; for example, madeleines are best served warm from the oven, dusted with confectioners’ sugar.
Chocolate Florentines (see recipe)
COOKIE CARE 101
Cookie dough and finished cookies are delicate. It is important to handle cookies with care at every stage of the process—from prepping, rolling, and cutting to cooling, decorating, and storing.
Shaping & Freezing
Making great cookies starts with the dough. Temperature is key! For best results, follow the instructions in each recipe regarding chilling and wrapping cookie dough; many require refrigerating the dough for at least 1 hour or up to overnight. Rolled cookie dough should never get too warm or it will spread while baking. When making Spritz Cookies (see recipe), be sure that the dough is at room temperature as it needs to be soft enough to extrude easily from the cookie press. To save time, the dough for some recipes can be prepared ahead and then frozen, as with the Checkerboard Cookies (see recipe). If working with frozen dough, let it stand at room temperature for a few minutes before shaping or slicing.
Baking & Cooling
Oven temperatures vary, and since cookies have short baking times, it is important to watch them closely so they don’t burn. Check for doneness a couple of minutes before the recipe indicates. To ensure even cooking, rotate the baking sheets halfway through the baking time. Use wire racks for cooling; they allow air to circulate