Bake Something Great! – 400 Bars, Squares & Cookies
Author: Jill Snider
Publisher:
Robert Rose (2011)
I’m a bona fide baker – not only is it my passion to whip up
cookies and brownies on the weekends for friends, family, and sometimes
complete strangers, but I bring that joy every week to my classroom when I
teach Home Economics for grades 1-8. I even trained
in baking at one of the renowned Toronto culinary colleges. Suffice it to
say, sugar and flour live in my bones. So of course, the possibilities of a
cookbook declaring it’s “great” recipes excited me – after all, for me the only
thing better than eating baked goodies is actually making them! Jill Snider
seems to agree with those of us who are baking-crazy, and penned Bake
Something Great! – 400 Bars, Squares & Cookies to prove it.
Bake is packed front to back with recipes designed to
suit almost everyone’s tastes. Chapters range from Brownies and Drop Cookies to
Nut Bars and Squares and Shaped Cookies and Biscotti. There are even special sections
for Cake Mix, Holiday, kid-friendly and “Good for You, Too” treats, and each
recipe has a handy tip in the sidebar for success in baking. Many of the
recipes also offer variations to try or suggestions for “jazzing up” a baked
good as well. Truly novice bakers will appreciate the thorough introduction,
including a 6-page primer on “Baking for Success” (p. 6) which covers everything from baking pan composition (shiny
vs. dark vs. glass), small appliances like mixers and food processors and
parchment paper (indispensable in my kitchen) to the methods of cooling,
cutting, storing and freezing. My personal favourite area of this chapter is a
chart that details just how many bars or squares you can get out of the most
common pan sizes – the multiplication is done for you!
With such a strong introduction, and being packed with full-colour
photographs, I couldn’t wait to see what I could make. I started with Classic Peanut Butter Cookies (p. 342) – which definitely had more
ingredients than the classic, back-of-the-jar one I’m used to but also had the
added interest of chopped peanuts in the dough. While I liked the flavour the
cookies had, they were too sweet for
my taste, spread a fair bit and also left a greasy mouthfeel. If I was to make
these again, I would drastically reduce the butter and cut the granulated sugar
in half, possibly cutting both sugars in half if I used honey-roasted nuts as
well. The cinnamon seemed out-of-place here as well, but that could be personal
preference.
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| Fabulous Fig Bars (p. 200) - original on top, modified on bottom |
Next, I went for one of my personal favourites from childhood – Fabulous Fig Bars (p. 200). Encouraged
by the photo (featuring equal thicknesses of cookie and fig layers) I set out
creating them. However, the ingredient amounts for the cookie component did not
yield nearly enough dough for a
bottom and top crust, even when I rolled it thinner than the photo showed. It was
also very hard to work with – dry and crumbly, not so much a cookie dough as a
crumb topping – and I needed to add milk to the recipe to get it to come
together. Later, I made a second batch (doubling the crust mixture, reducing
the total sugar to ¾ cup and adding about 3-4 tablespoons of milk) which fared
much better. Again, the flavours were present, but overall the experience was
disappointing.
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| Judie’s Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 359) |
While I’m not sure my experiences mimic every recipe in the
book, I can say that from my perspective Snider needs to go back to the testing
kitchen and rework many of the formulae in Bake Something Great! – 400 Bars,
Squares & Cookies. As a cookbook seemingly designed for all bakers,
including beginners, the amount of modification necessary to make the recipes “work”
seems to be a bit much. Regretfully, I will go back to baking up my own recipes
and leave this book on the shelf.
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