The Cookie Bookie

Cecile Ghosh was a librarian living in Rigaud, Quebec.

The Cookie Bookie is arranged by type of cookie (seed cookies, nut cookies, whole grain cookies, spice cookies, fruit cookies). The introduction discusses the origin of the cookies, along with helpful hints, the how-to of dough preparation, baking time, preservation, ingredients, and tools to use. Among the recipes are old favourites like almond crescents, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, along with unfamiliar ones like curry biscuits, banana cookies, and Gerard’s buckwheat inventions. Most of the cookies are prepared with wholesome-sounding ingredients (whole wheat flour, unsalted butter, and demerara sugar). Each cookie recipe, illustrated with tiny line drawings that fill the entire opposite page, lends an air of the fabulous to the art of cookie making. All are easy to make, although some recipes require a longer preparation time. Directly beneath each cookie title is some homey advice as to taste of the said cookie, dough texture, etc., which becomes rather tiring. There seems to be a trend in food books to dispense advice at the top of each page and humour at the bottom. Here, we are at least spared the jokes.

The recipes tested were all delicious, even the molasses flapjacks.