Cookies That Are True Red, White and Blue

There have been so many cookie books in recent years. Little cookie books. Fancy cookie books. Cookie books just for chocolate lovers. Usually a few recipes are worth adding to the files, but then the book goes on the shelf and becomes like the CD you bought for the title track--who cares about the other stuff?

But in a fortunate and entirely unplanned twist of fate, Nancy Baggett has produced “The All-American Cookie Book” (Houghton Mifflin, $35), one that will become like a broken record--in a good way. In these patriotic times, here’s a book that takes us through American cookiedom and extols chocolate chips, chews and butter brickle bars.

To gather the more than 150 recipes in this hefty book full of color photos, Baggett traveled all over the U.S., nibbling fruitcake cookies in Kentucky, whoopee pies in Pennsylvania, hazelnut-chocolate sandwich cookies in the Northwest and anise cookies in New Mexico.

As she roamed and as she ate, she became more annoyed with conventional wisdom that America borrows its baking traditions from Europe. “Wrong, wrong, wrong!” she says. “The repertoire American home cooks usually prepare is purely, unequivocally American to the core.” Our modern-day favorites (chocolate chip cookies) have been created by generations of pragmatic yet busy home cooks who have had little time to craft tuiles, Florentines, madeleines and other fussy cookies, she says.

Maybe it’s that they’re practical, but almost every one of the book’s recipes is appealing just by name alone: Lemon Cheesecake Tassies, Peanut Butter Fudge Cookies, Chocolate Espresso White Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Black Bottom Mini Brownie Cups. These are cookies you want to eat.

And even more than that, they’re cookies you want to bake--few require the elaborate time-involvement of some of those European fussbudgets. One of the best in the book, in fact--No-Bake Peanut Butter-Chocolate Crunch Bars--is true to its name: no baking required!

It might be a stretch to race to the oven to bake a batch of cookies for your country. But if you had this book in hand, who would stop you?