OUR CREATIVE TEAM
Scott Pavelle, my husband and cookie-baker extraordinaire, is the powerhouse behind decades of cookie research and recipe refinement. His work as an attorney gives him that special focus on the details, and his data-organization skills help us see historical as well as culinary patterns. He does the vast bulk of the writing – as well as the baking.
Kate Pavelle is a fiction writer and publisher. Her job here is to pitch in with the baking, recipe testing and editing, and the team coordination necessary that comes with making a cookbook reality. She is happy to test cookies, but stays away from those with too much dairy.
Miranda Pavelle is a graphic design professional and the driving force behind Pavelle Art. The interior design as well as the cover of this cookbook are her work.
Laura Petrilla is a locally active, yet nationally recognized, food photographer. Portraiture, food magazines, cookbooks, and art photography come from both her on-site work, and from her Pittsburgh studio. We’re so lucky to have her on board!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND INSPIRATIONS
We built this book over a span of decades in which Scott merrily rooted around the local libraries in search of new “classics,” scoured the Internet in search of alternate versions, and then the pair of us then set out to find the common threads and to refine that averaged starting point into perfection. But the actual art of cookie making… that we learned from a more limited set of authors and ancestors. They deserve some express credit and thanks. These are just a few.
Grandma Kandler, a/k/a Jarmila Musilova Kandlerova, a/k/a Kate’s maternal grandmother. You may notice a distinct Czech accent to a lot of this book because Kate’s the one with a personal cookie heritage. That goes back to Grandma Kandler, who filled each Christmas with sounds and scents and flavors and joy even under the material shortages indigent to the repressive Communist regime of the late 60’s and 70’s. Every generation builds on a pyramid of inspiration and shoulders from those who came before. Grandma Kandler is the cornerstone of ours.
Jarmila Stoy, Kate’s mother. She brought these cookies and their traditions to America when the family immigrated here in 1980. Since the gluten content and the texture of flour in the US is very different from the one in Europe, she forged on through countless “failed” batches to adapt family recipes so they produced cookies so respectable, her cookie tray was responsible for inspiring Scott to continue and expand our family cookie tradition.
Maida Heatter. Maida’s da best. Maida’s da bomb. Maida’s da Queen of All Things Cookie. Her recipes are easy, precise, reliable, readable, and superb in every other way you could possibly imagine. If you haven’t read Maida Heatter’s books, put this one down, go to your local bookstore or library, and get them. That’s the single best cookie making instruction that anyone could give.
As we write this Mrs. Heatter is an extremely old lady living in Florida, long since retired but still adored by millions of bakers around the world. Millions. That’s not an exaggeration. We are among them. The very first box of books we receive will have one that’s going in her direction with our sincerest thanks and admiration.
Maida’s da best. Maida’s da bomb. Get thee hence and read her books.
Shirley Corriher. Who could follow Maida Heatter? No one. But the next in line has to be the lady who wrote that indispensible food science guide to how baking works: Bakewise. We’ve only lifted one or two recipes from that book for this collection – Moravian Snowflakes for sure with some tweaks to our Lace Cookie formula based on hers – but we both want to say that we are better bakers because we read it. You will be too.
Dorie Greenspan is the first lady of modern, creative cookie cookery. Her wonderful tome called Dorie’s Cookies came out as we were in the throes of final recipe testing but she would have been on this page anyway because of all the work we enjoyed beforehand. Indeed, Dorie deserves extra credit because she’s the one who brought Pierre Hermé a/k/a “The Genius,” to English speakers like us. How good is Hermé? Let us tell you a story.
We have a friend named Jean Marc Chatellier who owns a local bakery that has become famous for a 2-3 hour drive in any direction. He grew up in France, trained in France, emigrated from France, and makes French pastries every bit as good as what you’ll find in France. We’ve compared them and can personally attest to that truth. A few years back Jean Marc took his family on a “research trip” to Paris. He came back almost offended. Indignant.
“I can do that! They’re not all that special.” Then he paused. “Okay, Hermé is pretty good. But the rest of them… I can do that!”
We teased him. “So you bow to God but the rest are mortal?”
“Well, yeah. But what’s wrong with that?”
Absolutely nothing Jean Marc. You are a true master. Museums are filled with paintings by men no better with their oils than you are with your flour and butter. But there’s only one Da Vinci. We love Dorie Greenspan’s work for it’s own sake, but we owe her for the introduction to Mssr. Herme as well.
Cook’s Illustrated a/k/a America’s Test Kitchen. These good people do yeomen’s work testing and testing each recipe, and more importantly explaining what choices they made along the way. Two of our favorite recipes in the book originated here, the Lemon/Lime Sugar Cookies, with that wonderful trick of working zest into the sugar, and Millionaire’s Shortbread, which features an equally wonderful shortbread crust. True, there is no “Mrs. Illustrated” or “Mr. Test” in the same way there’s a Maida, Shirley or Dorie, but the work itself is every bit as good and has been, month after month, for decades. A+ for substance and definitely worth the investment.
Christopher Kimball. The founder of Cook’s Illustrated et. al. who has now moved on to a new venture called Milk Street. Same comments. A+ for substance, including an article on the Polish gingerbread cookie Piernicki, which I was sure only the immigrants would know in America. Signs look good for the new project, but this is a thank you for all the work over the years. Mr. Kimball has done as much as anyone to raise all boats in the sea of American cooking.
There are others we could mention. Nancy Silverton, who’s just a flat-out inspiration in everything she bakes. Rose Levy Berenbaum, who’s every word is a lesson in how to cook like a professional in the confines of a home kitchen. Anne L. Watson, who wrote the definitive work on Baking With Molded Cookies and was kind enough to share some of her wisdom over email. The people who contribute to phenomenal cooking blogs like Serious Eats (Cook’s Illustrated on steroids, on line, for free). The people behind recipe collection sites like Allrecipes (“You want versions to compare? We’ve got more versions than you can compare!”). Folks such as… No, it’s got to stop. No baker is an island; or perhaps we are all islands in a long string of atolls going back through time. If you decide to tour the Sea of Cookies and find that you’ve liked our scenery, we heartily recommend the people and places above as additional ports of call.