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Excerpts From....
"COOKIES SAY IT SWEETLY"
By natalie.haughton@dailynews.com
By Natalie Haughton
Daily News Food Editor
Tuesday, December 02, 2003 - 'Tis the season to deck holiday gift tins and tables with festive and fancy cookies in a myriad of flavors, designs and shapes.
Spread sweetness and joy with fabulous gems like Orange Snowballs, Quick Panforte Bars, Florentines, Cappuccino-Pistachio Shortbread and Gingerbread Cutouts. These are just a small sampling of the wealth of tempting creations found in this season's crop of cookie cookbooks.
"Cookies are wonderful because they are single pieces that don't have to be shared," says Carole Walter, author of "Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets" (Clarkson Potter/Publishers; $35), her fifth baking book. "No matter how full they are, people will always make room for a cookie.
"Although people are intimidated by other forms of baking, the wall of fear comes crumbling down when cookies are in the picture," says Walter.
Homemade cookies are not only nifty for gift-giving, but economical as well, she adds. Granted, a certain amount of labor is involved in preparing them, but with a good game plan, baking can be accomplished with relative ease during the holidays.
The most important tips for cookie bakers, explains Walter by phone from her home in New Jersey, relate to temperature of the butter, measuring the flour and mixing the dough. "The butter shouldn't be too soft, and the dough shouldn't be
over mixed as it gets oily and hard to handle."
Walter, who has been teaching baking and cooking classes for 30 years, stresses that measuring flour properly is essential in baking. Use a graduated dry measuring cup, spoon in the flour and then level it off. "Don't dip and sweep, at it compacts the flour too much."
With her more than 200 recipes, 150 color photographs, hints, tips and sometimes lengthy directions, Walter hopes to make cookie-making foolproof. She leaves nothing to chance.
Bakers should find her secrets about ingredients, equipment, techniques and troubleshooting very useful, along with her list of specialty sources. Intriguing, too, is her chart highlighting the visual, flavor and textural attribute of different brands of milk, white, semisweet, dark and bittersweet chocolates.
Recipes are marked with cookie icons from one (most approachable) to three (more time consuming and challenging) to indicate the level of difficulty.
Contact Natalie Haughton at (818) 713-3692 or email: natalie.haughton@dailynews.com |
