A Very Shallow Book Review

Fact: ShallowGal owns 72 cookbooks.(1) This is nothing; before the "great cookbook purge of 2008" (2) SG actually owned closer to 200. ShallowGal treats her cookbooks like her children, in that she is constantly ranking and re-ranking them to determine her favorite.

Yesterday ShallowGal bought Martha Stewart's Cookies. This book will be released to the general public on March 11th, but ShallowGal knows people. (3)

Welcome to the family. You are currently tied for first.

The most important thing in any cookbook, as any serious cook will tell you, is the pictures. Martha has provided plenty of them; at least one for every single cookie. These pictures are only a little bit supposed to make you feel that you could never measure up to her royal bakerness. ShallowGal grade: A

You should see the springerle

Martha kindly divides the recipes into categories. Granted they are not the categories ShallowGal would use, namely contains chocolate, contains nuts, contains both chocolate and nuts and other. Instead Martha uses: light and delicate, soft and chewy, crumbly and sandy, chunky and nutty, cakey and tender, crisp and crunchy, and rich and dense. This is good because when I need to bring something for a fundraiser bake sale, I am often instructed to bring something sandy. ShallowGal grade: 7 1/2.

Last but not least are the recipes themselves. ShallowGal desperately wanted to try a few to give this review the illusion of actual usefulness, but alas, the day just slipped away. They certainly look easy enough. ShallowGal grade: two thumbs up.

List price is $24.95 but again, ShallowGal knows people.

1)More or less.
2)In this purge over 100 erstwhile cookbooks were donated to the library where SG will no doubt repurchase them at the next book sale.
3) Specifically, SG knows her neighbor Laurel who has a BJ's membership where some soon-to-be-fired employee accidentally opened a box a week early.