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Rating: 
Summary: The Best - Don't listen to the negatives...
Review: Elinor is a wonderful and inspiring cook. Her books are all good and full of quality recipes, authentic flavors, good advice and clear instructions. I have had the pleasure of meeting this great cook and had a cooking lesson with her. Believe me she does test and test and test her recipes and listens to all kinds of feedback on her treats. I was scared to make pastry dough until she showed me how to do it, and so easily too. I love this book especially at the holidays. The cookies and bars are easy to make and store/ship well. My treat receivers always comment on the flavor, texture and variety of my efforts. I am Elinor's biggest fan-she is a wonderful cook and person!
Rating: 
Summary: Erratic!
Review: I have never had such extremes of experience with a cookbook before. Some of the recipes have been great--for instance, the chocolate chip cookies with dried cherries were delicious, as were the DC toffee bars. But I have also had several batches of cookies made from recipes in this book totally fail. Not just turn out not to my liking, but completely fail. One such recipe was the white chocolate bars with raspberry swirl; I made them twice and they didn't turn out either time--they never cooked through no matter how long I baked them. Yesterday I made (or, shall I say, tried to make) the coffee toffee bars, and they didn't cook through, either. I am an experienced baker, there's nothing wrong with my oven (I checked it after the white chocolate brownie episode), and I followed the instructions in the recipe. And there have been other, similar flops. What a disappointment!
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Baking Book
Review: I love this book! I am blown away by the negative reviews of this book. This is my most used baking book. So here are the comments I have written in my copy of this book. Swahili Shortbread - "Excellent" (underlined twice); Avenue "J" Butter Cookies - "Very Yummy-Buttery"; Triple-Chocolate-Topped Chocolate Butter Cookies - "Impressive Buttery, Crisp Cookie" and many more "very good", "yummy", "buttery". "The Best of Everything Chocolate Chip Cookies" recipe is great. I have made this several times and usually put white chocolate chips on the chocolate half of the cookie and call them Yin Yang Cookies. They look cool and are easy to make. The price of this book is worth it for the Swahili shortbread alone. It is simple and absolutely fabulous! There are notes about the history of the recipes, and freezing and storage tips. We are having a bake sale next week at work and something from this book will defintely be successfully sold there.
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Baking Book
Review: I love this book! I am blown away by the negative reviews of this book. This is my most used baking book. So here are the comments I have written in my copy of this book. Swahili Shortbread - "Excellent" (underlined twice); Avenue "J" Butter Cookies - "Very Yummy-Buttery"; Triple-Chocolate-Topped Chocolate Butter Cookies - "Impressive Buttery, Crisp Cookie" and many more "very good", "yummy", "buttery". "The Best of Everything Chocolate Chip Cookies" recipe is great. I have made this several times and usually put white chocolate chips on the chocolate half of the cookie and call them Yin Yang Cookies. They look cool and are easy to make. The price of this book is worth it for the Swahili shortbread alone. It is simple and absolutely fabulous! There are notes about the history of the recipes, and freezing and storage tips. We are having a bake sale next week at work and something from this book will defintely be successfully sold there.
Rating: 
Summary: Recipes were NOT TESTED!
Review: These cookies are delicious and most are very easy to make! We made Cheese Crispies last night -- took 10 minutes to mix up and another 18 to bake. We were enjoying them as appetizers within a short while. Last week we made Tiffin Bars...gooey and chocolate-y. We can't wait to keep baking cookies and bars from this book. The instructions are easy to follow, the results are yummy.
Rating:
Summary: Recipes were NOT TESTED!
Review: Totally agree with reviewer of ERRATIC from Indiana. I also made the coffee Toffee Bars but the filling totally engulfed the crumb topping and it was just a mess. I made the Toasted Hazelnut Shortbread Hearts (see glossy picture insert) and it totally failed. The 'hearts' cooked into blobs and were totally burnt because the recipe instructions says to bake the 2 inch hearts in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. I thought the problem was in the editing, so I baked another batch at a lower oven temperature of 300 degrees. Same results, blobs of unrecognizable less burnt goo. This cookbook author writes for many newspapers and has other cookbooks, but has convinced me NOT to trust her recipes. The most frustrating fact is that I spent all this time and effort without having any cookies to eat!!
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