words

View Original

the good cookie life

Who doesn’t love a good cookie? Food blogger of Live Well Bake Often, Danielle Rye, thinks that everyone should have the ability to bake a good cookie, so she offers up everything you need for 75 amazing cookies that are good for holidays, special celebrations, and everyday.

Rye starts with the basic ingredients and equipment you’ll need to bake consistently, and then she goes right into the classic recipes. There are Chocolate Chip Cookies, Oatmeal Raisin, Peanut Butter Cookies (with the classic fork tine crisscross in the middle), Snickerdoodles, Shortbread, and Thick Chocolate Chunk Cookies. There is also a Small-Batch recipe where you can choose from 4 different mix-in ideas, like white chocolate and macadamia nuts or chocolate chips and M&M’s.

From there she does a deep dive into oat cookies. There are recipes for Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, Banana Oatmeal Cookies, Oatmeal Cream Pies, Carrot Cake Oatmeal Cookies, Lemon Blueberry Oatmeal Cookies, and Cowboy Cookies. And then it’s on to peanut butter, with the Edible Peanut Butter Cookie Dough, Peanut Butter and Jelly Thumbprints, Peanut Butter Cup Cookie Bars, Peanut Butter No-Bake Cookies, and Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies.

And then things get real: chocolate cookies! She starts with Brownie Cookies and Double Chocolate M&M’s Cookies, and goes on to talk about Chocolate Nutella Cookies, Flourless Chocolate Cookies, Turtle Cookie Cups, and Chocolate Whoopie Pies. And then it’s on to mixing things up a bit. There are Iced Lemon Poppy Seed Cookies, S’mores Cookies, Cookies and Cream Cookies, Brookies, Butter Pecan Cookies, Strawberry Shortcake Cookies, Blueberry Muffin-Top Cookies, and Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars.

Lastly, there are the special celebration cookies, like Red Velvet Whoopie Pies, Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies, Lucky Charms Cookies, Bird’s Nest Cookies, Funfetti Sugar Cookies, Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake, Fourth of July Cookie Cups, Pumpkin Cookies, and Apple Cinnamon Snickerdoodles. For those end-of-the-year holiday cookies, there are Sugar Cookie Cutouts with icing recipes and tips, Hot Cocoa Cookies, Spritz Cookies, Candy Cane Sugar Cookies, Cinnamon Roll Sugar Cookies, Gingerdoodles, adn Peppermint Snowball Cookies.

These recipes include small batches, for those times you need just a few cookies to get you by as well as some that are no-bake, gluten free, or even just the cookie dough. And she includes tips for making the dough ahead of time, for freezing the doughs and the cookies, for storing the cookies (if they last that long), and even for shipping the cookies to family and friends.

And since Rye is a food blogger, she knows how important it is for your cookies to look good. Throughout Live Well Bake Cookies are tips for making your cookies look delicious, including a troubleshooting section for when the cookies come out of the over too spread out, or not spread out, or too dark, or whatever else could go wrong.

Live Well Bake Cookies is the perfect cookie cookbook for those who have made the cookies from the recipe on the chocolate chip bag and who want to raise their game to the next level. It would work well for bakers who want to add some more flavorful options to their basic cookie recipes. Looking for more cookies for your Christmas cookie swap or your bake sale? This has lots of great ideas that will make you a popular baker. But if you’ve already got a pretty good cookie game, then you probably don’t need these recipes. But whatever your baking level, keep baking cookies, because there are few treats as good as a homemade cookie.

Egalleys for Live Well Bake Cookies were provided by Rock Point, Quarto Group through Edelweiss, with many thanks.