'Cookies are love, the love of making them and the love of sharing them. It is so much looser and easier to bring someone a few cookies than a layer cake or chocolate mousse.'Maida Heatter is one of the most iconic and fondly remembered cookbook authors of all time. Her recipes are modern classics, must-haves in the repertoire of any home baker--and her cookies are her pieces de resistance. From classics like the minty Palm Beach Brownies, the Plain Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookies, and the Absolutely Positively the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, to retro favorites like the elegant Austrian Walnut Crescents and the decadent Fudge Delices, there's a Maida Heatter cookie for every baker and every occasion.What makes Maida's recipes so special is the promise that each one, if followed to the T, will simply work. Maida makes cooking and baking so easy and foolproof that experienced cooks and novices alike will find themselves at home in her recipes--and have fun in the process.A perfect gift for newlyweds, recent grads, and the baker in your life, this will be the only cookie book you'll ever need--from one of the best there ever was.

Though Maida Heatter's life's work was teaching millions of Americans to bake, through it all, she had one undying passion: chocolate. A famous chocolate addict, she once declared: 'I am the Chairperson of the Board of the Chocolate Lovers Association of the World. (I worked my way up from a Brownie).'Her love for chocolate in all its forms produced hundreds of recipes for chocolate cakes, puddings, pies, cookies, confections, and of course, The World's Best Hot Fudge Sauce. The very best of those, the most fan-favorited, requested, irresistibly chocolatey delights, are reproduced in this definitive collection of the greatest chocolate desserts from the woman the New York Times dubbed a baking 'genius.'Each recipe will be accompanied by a gorgeous, full-color illustration and a heaping spoonful of Maida's no-nonsense, deeply lovable, surprisingly witty instruction--along with her promise that if you follow each recipe to the T, it will simply work.With recipes ranging from the simplest tea cake or cookie to the most elaborate confections (like Maida's September 7th Cake, her perennial birthday cake), this is a must-have book for chocolate lovers and for any baker who lives to please a crowd.

"Happiness is baking cookies. Happiness is giving them away. And serving them, and eating them, talking about them, reading and writing about them, thinking about them, and sharing them with you." Maida Heatter is one of the most iconic and fondly-remembered cookbook authors of all time. Her recipes, each a modern classic, are must-haves in every home baker's bag of tricks: her cookies, cakes, muffins, tarts, pies, and sweets of all kinds range from extravagantly special to the comforting and everyday. Her brown-sugary Budapest Coffee Cake, her minty Palm Beach Brownies, her sophisticated East 62nd Street Lemon Cake, and many other desserts have inspired legions of devotees. Happiness is Baking reproduces Maida's best-loved recipes in a fully illustrated new edition with a foreword by Dorie Greenspan. Developed for foolproof baking by experienced cooks and novices alice, these recipes bear Maida's trademark warmth, no-nonsense style, and her promise that they will work every time. Happiness is Baking is the perfect gift for anyone who loves baking--or who knows the happiness that comes from a delicious dessert.