I’ve had huge fun with this book. Cookies were the first things I learned to bake as I strived for my Hostess badge for Brownies (Brownies as in baby Girl Guides, not the cake) though we called them biscuits. ‘Cookies’ was altogether too exotic a term and, while I don’t know the first documented use of the word in Lancashire, it wasn’t bandied about in my neighbourhood in the 1970s. Encyclopaedic is the next word to consider, and with more than 300 recipes from 100 countries this book certainly is. As we’ve come to enjoy from Phaidon’s books it’s painstakingly researched and engagingly written, effortlessly folding cultural, historical and culinary nuggets together – for example did you know that baker’s ammonia, a raising agent used in European cookies, used to be made from the distillation of oil from deer antlers? No, I thought not. Needing an in to this massive list of crumbly deliciousness, I decided to start with biscuits from countries I have been to. New Zealand is referenced with Anzac bikkies, ginger crunch (a ginger-spiced cookie rather than the slice), milk chocolate roughs and hundreds and thousands biscuits (apparently the posh word for hundreds and thousands is nonpareils). In Iceland how did I miss marens-kornflexkökur, a brown-sugar meringue jammed with chocolate chips and cornflakes, Vietnam’s swirled pig’s ears cookies passed me by, but I ate my weight in alfajores in Argentina and I’m even more keen to go to Mexico now to try the pig-shaped piloncillo cookies. I’ve run out of space: all that’s left to say is buy the book and get baking. When you’ve made all 300 recipes I’ll mail you the Brownie badge. TRACY WHITMEY
