Little Book of Cookies, Pooja Dhingra’s recent alluringly helps out the munchkins with baking cookies

Pastry chef, entrepreneur and owner of bakery chain, Le15 Patisserie, Pooja Dhingra and her recent book, ‘Little Book of Cookies’ complement each other in narrating her love for cookies, but this time, she also decides to help the kids out who share the same fondness as hers.

Pastry chef, Pooja Dhingra’s childhood dilemmas during baking cookies have been well chronicled and resolved in her recent book while paving the way for the little ones to experiment in the baking world. Little Book of Cookies, released earlier this year not only contains 24 step-by-step cookie recipes for the kids but the entrepreneur-turned-author has also made sure to keep the children engrossed by giving background stories for cooking the recipes.

With turning pages of the book, one gets introduced to the foreword by the Hindi cinema actress Sonam Kapoor Ahuja which aims to transport us back to the springtime of her life when she would relish the “best nankhatai and chocolate chip cookies” made by her maternal grandmother. This gets followed by a peep into Dhingra’s childhood and her abiding love of baking and her objective to help bakers out with the process as she says,“I can not wait to be part of your baking journey.”

Dhingra, the protagonist even in a “recipe” book, begins to ease the process by sharing the ingredients that are common in almost all the recipes, advising bakers about must-dos, and stating the cautionary measures to keep in mind. The recipes for cookies that are universal in the world of cookies like Chocolate chip, sugar, and peanut butter cookies come to the notice of readers of the book who, along with this, also get to read what the author has to convey about the dishes through a comical character representing Dhingra, placed at the top of all the recipes.

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On the other hand, the book also surprises you by throwing light on recipes for some of the not-so-common cookies like marble, brookies, makhana granola, almond jaggery, coconut jaggery, and gingerbread cookies, to name a few. All these recipes come with separate columns for ‘ingredients’, ‘instructions’, and ‘tips’ if any. Some more recipes can be expected till page 61 before the book comes to an end.

Throughout the reading journey, a reader, who is most likely to be a kid, teenager or their parents who might be reading out to their children encounter a colourful trail of pictures depicting the final results of the recipe, which is much more appealing to the eyes. With the major hue being cookie-brown, the book aims its best to spread the chocolate aroma with its mere presentation. Even the book cover, embedded in at least, four different shades of brown falls perfectly into the minds of bakers.

Other than the picture, what comprises the appearance, noticeably, is the comical character of Dhingra. And there is no doubt that the character helps make the book conversational and keeps the readers hooked throughout with the author’s experiences and take. What also makes the book easy-to-read is the simple and clear language since it's intended for children. That being said, however, there are a few words that keep appearing in the book and that might have to be looked into a dictionary by the kids but if searched once, it surely makes the reading easy afterward. Hence, it will be unfair to say that the language could have been even easier.

If reading the “Introduction” is made into a habits for kids and they happen to read this book, it turns into the goodwill of both the book and the author as they get to know how all the recipes are tried and tested before taking their place in the book. Moreover, one can't deny the fact that the foreword by Sonam Kapoor Ahuja plays a pivotal role in arousing interest in this book.

Little Book of Cookies does not feel contrasting from Dhingra’s earlier books that also are meant for niche readers. But as usual, the conversational, pictorial description of the recipes in this compilation is what entices one in our opinion.  

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