I recently requested a copy of The Macaroon Bible by Dan Cohen through NetGalley because, well, who doesn't love macaroons? I was expecting something great - lots of unique recipes, really good results, beautiful pictures (a must for all cookbooks!). What I got was...not quite that. There was a picture for each recipe and they were beautiful. And every recipe I tried had good results. But the book did have some faults.
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| Chocolate and Original Macaroons |
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| Pumpkin Spice Macaroons |
A lot of the recipes were identical except for the addition of melted chocolate for dipping or caramel for drizzling. In addition, the recipes that were "different" more often than not just added a little flavouring, which even a novice baker could experiment with and still achieve excellent results in a cookie. This book has a price tag of almost $17 and I don't know about you, but if I'm going to part with my hard-earned money, I expect to get full value for it and repetitive recipes just don't seem like $17 worth of content to me.
Beyond that, I question some of the choices the author made. For example, the list of ingredients for every recipe calls for 1 14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk. As you read the directions for mixing though, you find that you only need 10 ounces. To me, a list of ingredients is supposed to tell you exactly the quantity of something you will be adding to the recipe, not the size of the can the product comes in. If I was making cookies with 2% milk in them, would the ingredient list tell me I need a 2L carton? Nope.
All things considered, I give The Macaroon Bible a measly two cupcakes out of five.
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