Review: Not just a recipe book
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 18, 2012
"The Christmas Cookie Plate:  50 Years of Award-Winning Cookie Recipes from the Russell Kitchen" is not just a collection of tasty cookie recipes but sociological evidence of a typical mid-American, middle class family's experience of Christmas over the past half-century.The introduction welcomes the reader into the Russell family with vintage photographs and tales of the mother's baking prowess which has inspired a great appetite for desserts as well as a holiday tradition of sharing home-made cookie plates as an expression of cheer and goodwill.  There are even photographs that display the treasures of the family recipe box, clipped from magazines and transcribed from church cookbooks, copied onto now well-used recipe cards and shared between friends and relatives.The actual cookie recipes are exactly what one would expect, a variety of best-of-class American cookie recipes gleaned from many sources, some no doubt familiar and others definitely worth trying.  I can vouch for many of them from my own experience and look forward to exploring some of the ones that I have never had the opportunity to enjoy.