The Cookie Jar is a collection of 100 recipes for biscuits, cookies and rusks, written by Lisa Clark specifically for the home baker. The recipes have been thoroughly tried and tested and will please anyone who wants to bake their own biscuits for the cookie jar.Best of all, you don’t need to be an experienced baker to achieve success with these recipes. They are easy to follow and use everyday ingredients. The Cookie Jar will take you back to the days when baking was therapeutic and an important part of life.
The Cookie Jar
Lisa is a food stylist by profession and says that baking runs her life. Her career is certainly reflected in the photographs that adorn the recipes in The Cookie Jar.
Chapters are divided into:
- Favourites
- Healthy
- Savoury
- Home-style
- Fancy
Recipes that caught my eye:
- Pecan sandies (p16)
- Speculaas (p21)
- Spice biscuits (p25)
- Rooibos tea biscuits (p26)
- Fruit crunchies (p34)
- No-bake vegan fudge bars (p41)
- Tahini cookies (p43)
- Gluten-free almond coconut bars (p46)
- Digestive biscuits (p55)
- Olive cheese sablés (p61)
- Herbed flatbread crackers (p64)
- Spiced chocolate cookies (p79)
- Chai spice rusks (p85)
- Rooibos fig newtons (p92)
What I made:
I made the speculaas cookies and could not get them as crisp as they should have been without burning the tops. The recipe for digestive biscuits was not very clear about what to do with the bran and oatmeal that did not sieve through so I just chucked it into the biscuits and the result was great. I also made the olive cheese sablés which were very buttery and tasty.
My verdict:
I cannot understand why recipes use mls for butter and nuts? You never know how packed the butter is into the cup measure. And it is just as difficult with chopped nuts as you are not sure how they coarsely they are chopped which could affect how many fit into the cup. Also, standard spoon measures do not include 4ml and 1.5ml measures which are impossible to guess! I wanted to make the no-bake vegan bars which mentioned raspberries in the introduction; however, they were not in the ingredient list. Despite my criticisms, I am sure to make good use of the book.
Publishing information:
Dave and I are overseas in Europe. We will be back at work on the 2nd of May. I will start replying to comments then. I won’t be able to read any blogs while we are away so please forgive my lack of visiting back. You can follow our trip by taking a look at our holiday blog.
This book looks awesome!! I’m especially into those olive cheese sables 🙂
Hope you’re having fun on your trip!!
We had a super time!
Hi Tandy, this book sounds wonderful, I’m one of those people that baking does not come easy to no matter how precise a recipe is.
I think it helps to have measurements in grams (or ounces) and mls instead of cups 🙂
I loved the digestive biscuit recipe you made from the book. And olive cheese sablés also sound very delish.
The sablés were excellent!
The book cover looks lovely! Sometimes measurements described in recipe books can be a bit challenging, glad that your digestive biscuits worked out so nicely 🙂
I don’t know why people have to make it a challenge to bake a recipe!
Oooohhhh! This book looks good. I just love cookies and they are generally so easy. The problem is I can’t stop eating them!
Me either Jem 🙂
I love baking biscuits and this book looks great. I don’t mind measurements in ml as I usually semi melt my butter. For your information, with butter, 1 ml = 1 gram so 250 ml is equal to 250 grams of butter. Have a great weekend, Tandy.
For butter 1ml is easy, but not for spices. Also, cup measures differ around the world so a cup here might be 250mls but that’s not the case in the US. Hence I prefer weight measures.