Old-School Cookie Book From the '60s: The Art of Making Good Cookies

My latest find at the library's 'Friends of the Library' store - an older cookie recipe book from the sixties. The Art of Making Good Cookies Plain and Fancy (Annette Laslett Ross and Jean Adams Disney, Doubleday, 1963) is a hardback covered recipe book with many different cookies, or cookies for special events like party cookies.

The substitutions chapter lists things still being applied today, nearly fifty years later:

• If a recipe calls for butter, don't substitute
• Use 2 tablespoons less per cup of all purpose flour when in place of cake flour
• Coffee, fruit juices, and other liquids may be used in part or whole for liquids called for in a cookie recipe, except when the recipe calls for sweetened condensed milk
• Use 2 1/2 tablespoons cocoa with 1 1/2 teaspoons additional fat for each square of chocolate
• With other substitutions, use the rule "If in doubt, don't"

The cookies run the gamut from Plain Butterscotch Cookies to Fattigmand, from Norway, and for 3.00, was a very nice addition to my cookie cookbook collection.

Chapters and Cookbook Overview

There are 11 chapters in The Art of Making Good Cookies: What You Should Know About Cookies Before You Begin; Substitutions; Cookies At Home; Three R's Mean Cookies Galore; Four Score or More; To Mail With Love; Decoration Ideas and Frostings; Lets' Plan a Party; Christmas Cookie Baking Time; Cookies With a Foreign Accent; and Cookie Spectaculars. In case you're wondering, the 'Three R's' chapter is all about cookies for the school lunchbox, or for after school treats for the household cookie jar. The 'Decoration' chapter deals with frostings/icings, cutting out cookies, and the general decoration of them.

In all, if you can find this book at a used book store, it will be a fun read. The only pictures, though, are around the center in the form of a two-page spread with different cookies. Numerous illustrations are throughout the book though.

Book Information

• The Art of Making Good Cookies Plain and Fancy: A Collection of Recipes For Cookies of all Types, Shapes, and Sizes, and for Every Occasion; by Annette Laslett Ross and Jean Adams Disney
• Doubleday & Company
• Hardcover with dust jacket, 252 pages

Disclosure: This book was purchased by the author and any opinions are the authors own.