The Family Baker: 150 Never-Let-You-Down Basic Recipes

Purdy (author of award-winning Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too) offers time-honored desserts from friends and family. Extremely helpful organization lets home bakers know what special equipment to get, how long a recipe will keep and tips for preparation. Chatty preludes create a tempting fantasy world in which women sit around tea tables crying over long-forgotten cookie recipes. The recipe for Gladys Martin's Sour Cream Coffee Cake alone may be sufficient reason to buy the book, and there are also fine recipes for classic pies, cakes (Basic No-Bake Cheesecake) and puddings (Pennsylvania Dutch Baked Apple Pudding with Warm Nutmeg Cream). Unfortunately, many basic recipes (Thumbalinas are just thumb-print jam cookies) have been covered in such compendiums as The Joy of Cooking. Everyone already has a recipe for Lemon Squares tucked away on an index card; as well, the author admits that Cookie Jar Oatmeal Raisin Cookies is a variation of the Quaker Oats recipe and that the chocolate chip cookie recipe is Nestle's. The Triple Chocolate-Nut Biscotti, an unusual inclusion here, complicates what should be a simple Italian cookie with too many ingredients. Many of the recipes in the ""Kids in the Kitchen"" chapter don't quite come together--waiting overnight for the Baked Banana-Coconut Ice Cream, only to find out that it is potentially too hard to scoop, will strain the patience of child and adult alike. (Oct.)