Do you love chocolate chip cookies? Who doesn’t, right? I promise that you will absolutely love The Chocolate Chip Cookie Book. It is filled with mouth-watering and delicious recipes plus extremely delicious eye candy, as in photos of all the delectable treats, that will leave you salivating. And if that’s not enough, you will learn that there is a multitude of yummy goodies that you can make with chocolate chips.
The book begins with a discussion of kitchen tips and tricks followed by tools and equipment. Katie Jacobs then reveals a fact, which not many of us realize - that baking is actually a science and demonstrates in revealing photos how different amounts and/or ingredients affects the finished product. I found this section absolutely fascinating and believe it is applicable to all sorts of baking. And if you are already an accomplished baker, you will undoubtedly learn a new tip or trick from Jacobs.
The 100 recipes are divided into five sections - (1) The Classics-24 of these recipes in this section, (2) Specialty Cookies and Bars-23, (3) Cakes, Pies and Giant cookies-17, (4) The Fun Stuff-18+6=24, and (5) Healthy(ish) Treats -12. Furthermore, recipes include gluten-free, vegan, paleo, etc to meet any dietary needs.
Some very useful things I learned was how much to adjust the temperature or time if using a convection oven, how to use a cookie cutter after the cookies come out of the oven to straighten the edges, the difference between light and dark brown sugar, and the effect on the cookies if you use butter that is melted, creamed or cold. The best part of this book, that I believe you will not find anywhere else, is what happens to the cookies if you add too much of an ingredient or not enough. For example, extra egg whites leads to taller cookies whereas extra yolks results in fudgier cookies. Jacobs explains the different results for warmer vs. cooler dough, higher vs. lower temperature, granulated vs. brown sugar, baking soda vs. powder, less vs. more flour, etc.
Some of my favorite recipes from The Chocolate Chip Cookie Book are chocolate chip cookie layer cake, county fair chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip cookie shortbread, and chocolate chip cookie waffles. There are still many recipes that I haven’t tried yet but plan to do so. If you are not interested in baking, you should buy this book anyway for the delicious looking photos. But be warned, I think I might have gained weight just looking at all the pictures! I highly recommend this book for any baker because it explains how changes to a recipe will affect your outcome.
Thank you to Harper Celebrate and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest opinion.