December 13, 2012

Rose Levy Berenbaum: Rose's Christmas Cookies

There is a reason that the word cookie follows Christmas with such inevitability. After all, what would Christmas be without Christmas cookied? Nothing represents the spirit of loving, nurturing, and giving more than a homemade cookie.

For years, I avoided this cookbook. It was "too popular." Too frequently, I've found myself out of synch with popular taste. I don't get Cheers or Seinfeld. Red velvet cake seems overrated. I've heard enough of bacon to last a lifetime. I held off buying Rose's Christmas Cookies for a decade. I've no idea what finally impelled me to buy it, but I'm glad I did. Probably The Cake Bible convinced me. Berenbaum deserves her reputation as one of America's leading bakers and cookbook authors.

The recipes range from the simple, like spritz, through the very ambitious, like Swiss-Italian mocha meringues, made by pouring melted sugar into stiffly-beaten egg whites, and a gingerbread model of Notre Dame Cathedral, with ten pages of blueprints alone. "Hardcore," my husband commented.

Rose's Christmas Cookies is a beautiful book to read. In addition to a full-page, full color photograph of each cookie. (And the cathedral. Holy wow.) She introduces each recipe with a few paragraphs with how the cookie and recipe came into her life. I have literally spent hours just paging through and planning what to bake for the season.

In general , the recpies work. Berenbaum writes for bakers with at least basic skills (like creaming and measuring). As with all her books, measurements are giving in usual cups and teaspoons, and also in ounces and grams. However, the ingerdents are not listed in the otdrer in which they are used, which I find an odd oversight; when whisking the dry ingredients together, it's easy to overlook one if the butter and vanilla is between the salt and the flour. The book is divided into Christmas social occasions, like "for Open House" and "for Holiday Dinner Parties," that I can't quite understand, although the "Kids" and "Mantelpiece" categories are clear enough.

Additionally, there are her usual detailed sections on ingredients and equipment, and sections for storing and packaging cookis. Each recipe includes hints and tips.