REVIEW POST: Well Read Cookies by rising Australian star Lauren Chater

Curling up with a book was never so delicious!

Well Read Cookies by rising Australian star Lauren Chater is a whimsical book that celebrates beloved works of literature in the shape of beautiful iced biscuits.

With all the tender love and care of a true book lover, author and baker extraordinaire Lauren shows you how to translate your favourite books to the plate – and start making your very own sweet morsels of edible art. Filled with beautiful photographs and insider tips on achieving cookie nirvana, now you can have your books and eat them too.
Feast your eyes on 60 mouth-watering classics in full colour from Jane Austen and Mary Shelley to Tolkien and F. Scott Fitzgerald, modern masterpieces by Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Geraldine Brooks and Melissa Ashley, and beloved children’s tales by Dr Seuss and J.K. Rowling.

Lauren Chater is the founder of the popular blog, The Well-Read Cookie, and author of the acclaimed historical novel The Lace Weaver.

Her second novel, Gulliver’s Wife, is published next year and she has two additional books contracted.  

Extracted from Well Read Cookies by Lauren Chater,
published by Simon & Schuster Australia, RRP AU$24.99 or NZ$28.99.

Photography © Lauren Chater

The Birdman’s Wife

Melissa Ashley

Books about taxidermy occupy a very unusual spot in literature. After reading Melissa Ashley’s debut novel, a vibrant reimagining of the life of 19th century artist Elizabeth Gould, I was keen to explore the dark side and find out if anyone else had been brave enough to write about this macabre topic.

My research led me to quite a few places (including the hilarious Crap Taxidermy – I recommend), but none of the books I read were as good as The Birdman’s Wife. Somehow, Ashley manages to get right under the skin (oops!) of her characters and inject the perfect amount of tension into the story of this little-known Australian artist. Bad puns aside, the book was an eye-opener into the way 19th century English migrants responded to the Australian landscape by attempting to study and tame its elusive fauna and wildlife – and thereby understand themselves. And thankfully, attitudes about the preservation of wildlife are changing as society develops a more respectful response.

I used a copper cookie cutter to make these delicate hummingbirds – which were painted by Elizabeth Gould and referenced in the book – and edible paint to create the watercolour effect of the feathers.

A few tips about using edible paint:

·         It’s best to apply edible paint sparingly using a good brush. If you use too much in one go, it creates pockmarks or holes in the icing which is not the look you’re going for.

·         I recommend a nice watercolour sable-hair brush if you can get it. Your cookies are works of art, like Elizabeth Gould’s, so you want the best quality brush you can afford!

Extracted from Well Read Cookies by Lauren Chater,
published by Simon & Schuster Australia, RRP AU$24.99 or NZ$28.99.

Photography © Lauren Chater

The German Girl

Armando Lucas Correa

Many people see passenger liners as places of transit, a bridge between the old world and the new. This unique experience takes a tragic twist in Armando Lucas Correa’s novel, which chronicles the ill-fated journey of the transatlantic liner St Louis through the eyes of a young Jewish girl, Hannah Rosenthal. Fleeing the persecution of the Nazi regime in 1939, Hannah and her parents join others on board the ship, expecting to disembark in Cuba, but their excitement quickly sours as the ship is turned away from that port, and every other, and the liner soon becomes a floating crypt. Correa pays tribute to those poor souls in this sobering story about war, hope and the human condition.

Of all the passenger liner tragedies in popular culture, the best known is of course the White Star’s Titanic but the success of Correa’s book has recently thrown light on the forgotten passenger ship St Louis. A German ocean liner, she set out in May 1939 and soon became embroiled in a political and humanitarian crisis when Jewish passengers fleeing the Holocaust were denied entry at every port.

With an eye to the recent horrors in Syria, Correa’s book seems more relevant than ever and, cute cookies aside, it’s one that everyone should read to prevent such a tragedy ever occurring again. These liner cookies were made using a custom cutter but any steamship cutter will do.

·         Outline and flood the bottom section first in black icing.

·         Outline and flood the top half in bright white icing once the bottom has dried.

·         Use grey icing in a piping bag fitted with a 1.5 mm tip to add the decorative stripes and the windows.

Extracted from Well Read Cookies by Lauren Chater,
published by Simon & Schuster Australia, RRP AU$24.99 or NZ$28.99.

Photography © Lauren Chater

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Eric Carle

Why are children so obsessed with books about food? From Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Possum Magic, food and literature continues to be an utterly magical combination. What is it that makes us go gaga for Suessian green eggs and ham and dreamy Sendak-style aeroplane doughnuts? Psychologists suggest food is associated with memory, so perhaps when parents read to children from picture books which feature fantastical feasts and pleasant picnics, a love of food is absorbed along with the language.

Nowhere is this combination of edibles and idioms more apparent than in Eric Carle’s classic tale of gluttony and greed, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Brimful of fruit, condiments and sweets, it’s the ultimate guide to a week’s worth of overeating, but it’s also a lesson in growth and transformation.

The compulsion of the caterpillar to consume everything in sight is an instantly recognisable childish trait. The mere whiff of a pickle takes me straight back to my school days, and whenever the words ‘chocolate’ and ‘cake’ are mentioned together, I find myself reaching for the fridge – because, as everyone knows, the perfect accompaniment to a Matilda-style Bruce Bogtrotter chocolate cake (thank you Roald Dahl) is a slice of Swiss cheese.

When I was making these hungry caterpillar cookies, my children offered very helpfully to cut the holes out of the ‘fruits’ instead of what they usually do, which is squirt the icing straight into their mouths. I recommend using the bottom of an icing tip to get a good-sized hole and piping an outline around the hole first before you flood so that the icing doesn’t drip down inside. You’ll need a 1.5 mm tip for the caterpillar’s details.

RECIPE

Extracted from Well Read Cookies by Lauren Chater,
published by Simon & Schuster Australia, RRP AU$24.99 or NZ$28.99.

Photography © Lauren Chater

Vanilla Sugar Cookies

makes around 16

250g unsalted butter, softened

1 egg

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

6 cups flour, plus extra for rolling out

1/2 tsp baking powder

STEP 1 Place softened butter and caster sugar in a large bowl and mix until smooth and light in colour (about four minutes).

STEP 2 Add in vanilla essence and beat in egg, until combined.

STEP 3 Slowly beat in the baking powder and flour, one cup at a time. After two minutes or so of beating the dough should start pulling away from the edge of the bowl and form a lump. Remove the dough from the bowl and knead it on a lightly floured surface.

STEP 4 Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and place in fridge for at least four hours.

STEP 5 Preheat oven to 180°C (355°F). Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut out desired shapes. Place them on flat baking trays and put in freezer or the fridge for at least 20 minutes before baking to preserve shape.

STEP 6 Bake each tray for 18 minutes, turning halfway to ensure consistency.

STEP 7 Allow to cool completely before decorating.

OUR ATTEMPT AT MAKING SOME COOKIES EXPLAINED:

This was a beautiful book to peruse and my 5 year old daughter thought the variation of cookie images were fantastic, she was in awe!

So much so, we decided to try and attempt to make some out of the book together!

I had bought a few different cookie cutters as shown in image and we made the dough mixture, which was rather crumbly, so I googled why and added some water to make it all join together better and make it easier to knead (to be quite honest Im not sure what I did wrong initially), wrapped the dough up in glad wrap and set in the fridge for the recommended 4 hours! My daughter promptly had a cry as she wanted to do it there and then!!lol! I told her these things take time!!

We rolled out the dough once it had been in the fridge and made the various shapes then put them on a tray, into the freezer for 20minutes to hold their shape then into the over for 20 minutes.

Here are some fresh out the oven:

Made 39 cookies in actual fact!!

I used ready to roll out fondant icing, cutting out via the same cutters used to make the cookies:

\

DECORATED BY MYSELF:

As you can see I'm not very creative, lol!! But hey I tried!

The next two images are my daughters creative part:

This was a fun experience to do with your child/children if the mood strikes. They taste good too!!!

Thank you to Simon & Schuster AU for the Papercopy copy of the book for review!