If you see The Cookie Collection in a bookstore, you’ll want to pick it up. That typography, heavy sans serif on a slant, will capture you eye for sure. The sandwich cookie on the cover is going to make your hand move and pick the book up.
Get the book. Take it home. Bake and enjoy any [or all!] of the 128 recipes offered to you here.
The author here is Brian Hart Hoffman, the founder and CCO [chief creative officer] of Hoffman media. He has not launched a thousand ships, but he has launched a series of publication, both books and magazines, that have major impact on our culinary lives. Southern Cast Iron, Southern Home, and Bake from Scratch are samples of this modern, sleek and very delicious set of publications.
I know: cooking is serious business. I don’t think they laugh a lot in the kitchens of the four-star restaurants in Paris. Serious business.
But, cooking can be, and should be, fun. This is distinctly a fun book. It is subtitled: Artisan Baking for the Cookie Enthusiast. That’s me and it can by you too.
The fun starts with this first recipe: Chocolate Chip Graham Sandwich Cookies:
It’s in the first chapter of the book: The Obligatory Chocolate Chip Chapter. I find that title happily snarky and this introductory recipe is magnificent. I’ll post the recipe later today. For now, think of childhood graham crackers made with graham flour, that coarse-ground whole wheat flour that makes graham crackers so addictive. Well, here you add chocolate chips and then double down. It’s a sandwich cookie with Vanilla Buttercream. Open wide and enjoy.
The other book chapters have equally intriguing titles and recipes:
- FOMO Cookies: Fear of Missing Out Cookies, which you do NOT want to do
- That’s My Jam: sticky, fruity and something to mind you of long ago
- Better with Butter: extra butter for cookie richness
- Boozy Cookies: in the batter or the filling or the frosting to brighten you day
- Stop, Drop and Bake: out of the bowl and onto the baking sheet
- Spice It Up: cardamom, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and more
- Bake It Bigger: like 10-inch skillet bigger
There’s a full-page picture with each recipe, clearly designed to throw you over the edge and start baking. It is very difficult to just leaf through this book. Temptation is deep here. Here’s my shopping list of 17, yes seventeen, cookies I’ve already marked to try out his holidays season:
S’mores Chocolate Chuck Cookies [with mini-marshmallows]
Whiskey and Rye Cookies [real whiskey, rye flour]
Milk Chocolate Egg Cookies [Easter eggs in the cookies]
Chocolate Peppermint Crinkle Cookies
Malted White Chocolate Lace Cookies
Jam-Filled Pecan Snowballs
Sour Cherry Shortbread Linzer Cookies
Rosemary Shortbread Sandwich Cookies with Concord Grape Jam
Shortbread Linzer Cookies with Raspberry Jam Filling
Strawberry and Rosemary Shortbread
Cranberry Pecan Maple Shortbread
Glazed Campari and Strawberry Cookies
Candied Cherry, Date, and Pistachio Biscotti
Flourless Fudgy Cookies
Earl Grey Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
Roasted Blood Orange Hazelnut Biscotti
Palmiers with Vanilla Bean, Pecan, and Cardamom
As you can see, the mix of recipe ideas here is wide-ranging. There are some old friends with a bit of amplification: Chocolate Peppermint Crinkle Cookies. And then there are the high-flying new ideas you have not imagined before: Rosemary Shortbread Sandwich Cookies with Concord Grape Jam.
Suzi and I do serve cookies for dessert at dinner parties. Yes, a good cookie can hold its own against a cake or pie or pavlova. You just have to eat more of them. And “more of them” is easily possible with the ideas you have presented in The Cookie Collection. You want to collect this book and then get out the butter, sugar and maybe some Concord grape jam.
Need a holiday present for a foodie friend? You’ll be loved for this present.
Oh, the Bake it Bigger chapter? How about the Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie?
See? You want this book.