Cookiepedia & Writing It Down

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I recently received a copy of The Cookiepedia by Stacy Adimando from Quirk Books

The Cookiepedia Mixing, Baking, and Reinventing the Classics Written by Stacy Adimando Photos by Tara Striano

The book contains recipes for 50 popular cookies.

Table of Contents  Introduction Page One  The ABCs of Cookie Baking Page Four Kitchen Tools Cookie Speak Fun with Decorating  Buttery Cookies Page Twelve Animal Cookies Butter Balls Blondies Cornmeal Cookies  Everything but the Kitchen Sink Cookie Frosted Maple Pecan Cookies  Italian Biscuits Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookies Sables Shortbread  Chocolaty Cookies Page Thirty Eight Brownies Chocolate Chip Cookies Crinkles Chocolate Sandwich Cookies Chocolate Spritz Cookies Florentines Mint Thins Triple Chocolate Cookies  Fancy Cookies Page 60 Alfajores Amaretti Black and White Cookies French Macarons Madaleines Palmiers Pinwheels Vanilla Meringues

Fruity Cookies Page Eighty-Two Coconut Macaroons Dried-Fruit Cookies Fig Bars Lemon Chewies Linzer Cookies Oatmeal Raisin Cookies Rugelach Thumbprints  Spicy Cookies Page One Hundred Four Cardamom Cookies Gingersnaps Gingerbreads Green Tea Cookies Molasses Spice Cookies Salt-and-Pepper Cookies Snickerdoodles  Nutty and Seedy Cookies Page One Hundred Twenty Six Almond Biscotti Almond Crescents Caramel Nut Bars Peanut Butter Cookies Pecan Sandies Pignoli Cookies Pistachio Cookies Poppy Seed Squares Sesame Crisps  Index Page One Hundred Fifty

Although it’s always possible to Google for recipes, read blogs and find recipes, use the online recipe websites, or use your Grandmother’s top secret recipe for the perfect chocolate chip cookie, it’s nice to have 50 popular yet diverse recipes all in one book.

The other thing I like about the book is that it has space on the pages to write notes and jot things down.  I am the queen of scribbling things next to recipes (with flour and butter on my fingers amid baking) but most cookbooks don’t have places for notes.  That was a nice touch.

I am excited to make Molasses Spice or Snickerdoodle Cookies from the book; classics that I haven’t tried my hand at yet, but want to.

I do have a Raw Vegan Gingerbread Cookie Bites recipe but I love ginger and molasses and want to make baked cookies.

Raw Vegan Gingerbread Cookie Bites
I can’t wait to play around with Stacy’s recipes.  I’ll keep you posted how things turn out.

If I had not been writing down the recipe for these Peanut Butter Oatmeal White Chocolate Chip Cookies while I was standing there making them I would have forgotten exactly what I had done.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal White Chocolate Chip Cookies stacked

Same goes for Pumpkin Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars (Vegan, GF)

Pumpkin Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars

Even if it meant I had grease marks and flour dusted all over my scraps of paper and the pen was slipping out of my hands because I had butter and dough all over my fingers, I stopped to write things down.  I don’t even use a notepad.  My kitchen notes are scattered on random scraps of paper. Normally I’m not random like that but my recipes tend to be on little scraps.  Not high tech, at all.

The winner of the Gourmet Pretzels Giveaway is:

Kat October 31, 2011 at 8:50 am

I’d love to try the gluten free pretzels!

Congrats, Kat!

Questions:

1. Do you have a favorite cookbook or any cookbooks that you resort to over and over? 

I’m not the best lately with cracking open  my cookbooks.  I get so much online these days that I don’t use a fraction of the books I own or anywhere near their fullest extent of recipes.  Blogs, online sources, or Pinterest anyone?

2. Do you write notes down when you’re baking or cooking so that you can remember things later?

I used to think that I’d remember what I did or how I made something because it was so “obvious” or easy so wasn’t always the best at writing things down.

Until the next time I went to make that recipe months (or years) later and had absolutely no idea what tweaks or changes I made to an existing recipe.  And sometimes didn’t have the foggiest idea how I even began or started the recipe.

That happened to me with granola.  I used to make it years ago but randomly stopped for about 5 years and when I went to make it again was scratching my head.   I knew there was oats and sugar.  Or did I use Karo Syrup and brown sugar?  Or maybe white sugar with margarine?   Yeah.  I learned the hard to write things down.  Granola recipe (vegan, gluten-free) was recovered but it took some trial and error.   Lesson learned for me is to just stop and write things down because my memory apparently isn’t always what I think it is.

Thanks for the $25 Gift Card Giveaway entries!

P.S. Please Vote for Me in the Biscoff-Delta Bake Off.  I would really appreciate your vote and it just takes one second to click.  Thank you!

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Please note: I have only made the recipe as written, and cannot give advice or predict what will happen if you change something. If you have a question regarding changing, altering, or making substitutions to the recipe, please check out the FAQ page for more info.

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Comments

  1. I have a lot of favourite cook books, but I usually only go back to them for one or two specific recipes that I have tried and liked. I need to take the time to venture on to other pages of my favourite recipe books and see what else they have to offer.