Weekend Cooking: Sweet: Our Best Cupcakes, Cookies, Candy, and More

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish.

SWEET: OUR BEST CUPCAKES, COOKIES, CANDY, AND MORE is a new dessert cookbook from The Food Network. It is aimed at the beginner baker, although some recipes require more skill.  (See the Fake Out Cakes, which you make to look like other things.)  Some specialized tools like candy thermometers are needed for many recipes.  For the most part, however, the tools and ingredients needed are simpleeci and common.

It is also a super pretty cookbook.  Almost all of the recipes have a full-page photo of what it should look like.  This means that there aren't a ton of recipes actually in the book, but they are done in large print, which is handy when you're trying to read and bake and the same time.

I particularly liked the little sections giving ideas on how to modify and jazz up recipes (such as brownies and whoopie pies).  It's nice to have a little guidance on how to make the recipes your own.

The first recipe I tried was the Salted Caramel Thumbprints.  These are basically a sugar cookie with some pretzels and dulce de leche for flair.

Yeah, I ate a few.

The resulting cookies were quite delicious.  I found the base cookie a bit floury, but that is easy to adjust.  I did cut the amount of pretzels the recipe called for, and I'm glad I made that decision - 1 c total was more than enough.  I also added a touch less salt to the dough than called for out of respect to my family members with high blood pressure.  The salt in the pretzels was plenty.  I also didn't use a mixer, as the recipe calls for, because I don't own one.  My arm strength did just fine.

I'm also impressed that the recipe made 24 cookies, just as it said it would.  I find that recipes often overestimate how many cookies will be produced.

I'm excited to try some other recipes from this very pretty cookbook!