American Cookie: The Snaps, Drops, Jumbles, Tea Cakes, Bars & Brownies That We Have Loved for Generations

Shop Notes: I just love cookbooks that read like a book and Anne Byrn's American Cookie is worth the headnotes of each recipes alone, if anything to remind us all of the proud melting pot the United States is.  American Cookie reaches across the wide expanse of the historical, regional, and cultural breadth of our beloved snacks to provide us with a veritable roadmap of comfort food and cultural lore.  American Cookie begins its story in the colonial area with the very simple and still incredibly satisfying molasses drop cookie, but then we're off to explore the origin of the Nabisco Fig Newton (it's the Italian Christmas 'cucidati' which, I find fun to say, but understand why it was renamed to 'Newton'), Ella Brennan's eponymous New Orleans praline recipe, the South Carolina benne seed wafer, and the original 1922 Girl Scout Cookie.  In the middle, there are chapters on the various cookie types (dropped, rolled, shaped, iceboxed, candied, fried, etc.).  There are recipes in this book