Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies

Medrich presents a compendium of exciting and enticing cookie recipes that reflects every aspect of our widening culinary landscape. Whole-grain flours as well as wheat-free alternatives are becoming more and more prevalent, and people are more often exposed and open to exotic spices and unique flavor combinations. Nibby buckwheat butter cookies, golden kamut shortbread, honey hemp bars, and whole wheat biscotti showcase whole-grain flours, while wheat-free versions of rugelach, toffee bars, butter cookies, and caramel cheesecake bars (just to scratch the surface) aim to please an increasing number of gluten-intolerant dessert lovers. There's a good chunk of dairy-free cookies as well as lower-fat versions (two Weight Watchers points, to be exact). Comfortingly, there are also homey recipes for classic peanut butter cookies, cakey brownies, and rocky road bars. Flavor combos are intriguing, as in the wheat-free grapefruit and basil butter cookies, aniseed and almond shortbread, and nutty cocoa cookie bark with Parmesan and sea salt. The recipes are organized by texture, hence the title, but there's also a section grouping cookies into categories like those containing whole grains, those that keep at least two weeks, ridiculously quick and easy cookies, and cookies to make with kids. This book has redesigned and reframed the often-overlooked cookie and is a boon to the modern, conscious baker. (Dec.)