cover image Completely Cookies: Quick and Easy Recipes for More Than 500 Delicious Cookies

Completely Cookies: Quick and Easy Recipes for More Than 500 Delicious Cookies

Leslie Weiner. St. Martin's Griffin, $8.95 (125pp) ISBN 978-0-312-05405-2

Weiner and Albright ( Mostly Muffins ) continue their alliterative cookbook series with an entry for bakers who like their cookies straight, no chaser. True, they offer sensible advice on conversion, baking and mailing, but the bulk of the text is devoted to more than 50 cookie recipes. (Not present are cloying introductions, food-inspired poetry or portraits of the cook-as-artist.) Recipes are divided into cookie types--bar, drop, refrigerator and rolled--and feature both standards and exotica. Updates of tried-and-true favorites include date-nut pinwheels, while white chocolate, raspberry and coffee turn up in many of the more modern entries (apricot white-chocolate-chunk cookies, framboise brownies). A chapter called ``Create Your Own Cookies'' defeats gastronomic boredom. Instructions throughout are straightforward and simple. For the cookie lover, the book is the equivalent of a Swiss army knife--portable and multi-purpose. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Mar.)