"Big Fat Cookies" contains a good selection of recipes--an entire chapter each of "big chewy cookies," "colossal crisp cookies," and "two-fisted sandwich cookies." Whether you're looking for lemon whoopie pies, toasted coconut washboards, oatmeal trailblazers, toffee crunch cookie brittle, or chocolate chip-stuffed cookies, you'll find it in here. While you'll certainly find recipes that will please those who only eat "standard" cookie flavors, most of these recipes are inventive and unusual in at least some small way or another. For instance, the oatmeal cookies rolled in trail mix before baking (yum!) or the butterscotch "blondies" that are turned into drop cookies and have melted chocolate swirled into them.

As usual for a Chronicle book the production quality is quite high. Photos are elegant and tasty-looking. Layout is clear and easy to read. The recipe steps are simple and non-confusing.

The book includes notes on ingredients, tools, storing cookies, mailing cookies, and so on. Rather than providing hundreds of recipes of reasonable quality as many cookbooks choose to do, it concentrates on a more limited selection of higher-quality recipes. It certainly provides you with new ideas, however, from the cranberry-walnut cream cheese cookie mounds to the lemon butter crumb cookies and peppermint patties. Every recipe we've made from this cookbook has been delightful--particularly those butterscotch blondie cookies!

Full review at ErrantDreams ( )

Cookie monsters

Do you ever wonder about the names of certain restaurants? Doesn't "Blimpie" make you think you shouldn't eat at that sandwich chain if you care at all about your weight? Did that name really test well with consumers? Is there a whole audience out there just longing to gain weight?

The cookbook "Big Fat Cookies" (by Elinor Klivans, Chronicle, $18) would seem to have the same attached baggage. But try not to think about the name and its implied calorie count — the cookie recipes within are simple and delicious. I thought the fudge-filled chocolate chip cookies on the cover looked over the top, but a friend who wandered into the kitchen moaned "Why aren't you making THOSE?" (The other cookie on the cover, peppermint patties, mix a fudgy but dry chocolate cookie with lightly mint-spiked filling.)

Sizing the cookies was a bit of a crap shoot. They're intended to be large, but we thought the lemon-ginger cookie sandwiches worked better at a smaller, more Oreo-esque, size. (The cookies, utilizing ground toasted almonds and a delightfully sweet and light lemon filling, were a hit at any size.) I attempted to follow Klivan's size instructions for the peppermint patties, but somehow only got 6 cookies out of a recipe that supposedly makes 9.

The elegant butterscotch marble blondie drops didn't come out as art-gallery perfect as in the book, but their crisp butterscotchy flavor had a co-worker clamoring for the recipe. Super S'more crisps combine those favorite campground ingredients — chocolate, marshmallow, and graham — for a bumpy, unusual treat. Least satisfying: The maple cranberry oatmeal cookies were a bit flavorless.

Cookies are rarely difficult to make, and after a while, cookie recipe books tend to run together. Yet Klivans' stands out for exactly the reason her title states — the cookies are hefty handfuls, more a dessert than a snack. Just try not to think about the calories. —Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6848770/

GOOD recipes!!! yummy cookies. ( )