In Dede Wilson’s A Baker’s Field Guide to Chocolate Chip Cookies, you’ll find 70+ recipes for all sorts of chocolate cookies. From the plain and simple, to crazy or sophisticated, if it’s remotely related to a chocolate chip cookie, it’s probably in here. Like a nature field guide, each cookie has a type indicated, a description, field notes, and a life span noted for storage. Each recipe also has symbols indicating ease of shipping, dough freeze-ability, baking speediness, and how kid-friendly the recipe is. The recipes are easy to understand and rarely will you have to hunt down an unusual ingredient. Wilson has two other cookbooks that follow the same concept if you like this one - A Baker’s Field Guide to Christmas Cookies and A Baker’s Field Guide to Holiday Candy & Confections.
There are 2 recipes that you cannot miss in this field guide. The first is the Couture Chocolate Fleur de Sel Cookies, which is a dark chocolate cookie slice and bake cookie with sea salt sprinkled on top. People are usually hesitant to try these at first, but one bite will change that! The other recipe is the Holy Smokes Heavenly Chip and Cranberry Cookies. I normally just call them white chocolate cranberry cookies, and I change the recipe slightly to make smaller cookies, but I can never make enough of them. I double the recipe, or even triple it depending on the number I’m trying to serve. The author suggests using high quality white chocolate and cranberries, and I completely agree. The end result is a soft, buttery cookie with pretty red and white spots, just perfect for the holidays. Other stand-out recipes are the Espresso Kahlua Buttercream Chunk Bars (these smell amazing while baking!), the easier-to-make-with-lots-of-hands Half and Half Cookies, and the flourless Chocolate Almond Sparkles. Be sure you make a copy of the recipes you use, because you WILL be asked to make them again!