cover image Maida Heater's Brand-New Book of Great Cookies

Maida Heater's Brand-New Book of Great Cookies

Maida Heatter. Random House (NY), $25 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-679-43874-8

In her seventh dessert book, Heatter thoroughly updates her James Beard Award-winning 1977 book on cookies (all but one recipe, that for Positively-the-Absolutely-Best-Chocolate-Chip-Cookie, are new). Blending a breezy prose style with precise, clearly sequenced instructions and a boundless respect for her topic, she offers a rounded collection for new bakers and experienced cookie hands. A chapter on techniques and equipment is followed by recipes arranged generally by the methods of shaping cookies, e.g., bar cookies and rolling-pin cookies. Recipes for twice-baked biscotti include meta-healthy Multigrain and Seed Biscotti and three featuring chocolate (one using a candy bar). Among ice-box cookies are dainty Pennies from Heaven, sandwiched with butter cream; drop cookies include a variety of fruit- and nut-loaded hermits and Skinny Peanut Wafers, beloved by Heatter's personal trainer. Recipes for rolled and cut cookies (Pfeffernusse; Espresso Chocolate Shortbread) and those shaped by hand or with a pastry bag or cookie press (Sweet Pretzels; Bittersweet Chocolate Macaroons) suggest holiday fare. Heatter drops names along with rounded teaspoons of dough: Wolfgang Puck eats her cookies, and so does Gianni Versace. But she remains as exacting as the most diligent home-ec teacher when it comes to the baking process, even to packaging instructions. Like her subject, this is an irresistible offering. (Oct.)