MY MOST FAVORITE DESSERT COMPANY COOKBOOK: Delicious Pareve Baking Recipes

Born in Vienna, later arriving in the U.S. as a WWII refugee from Italy, Schechter was imbued with European baking traditions and determined to reproduce the flavors of her childhood when she opened her first New York bakery in 1982. The question was: could she, as a kosher cook, concoct pareve (made without milk) Linzer Cookies, Sacher Torte, Genoise with "Buttercream" and Hamantaschen without butter, cream, milk or sour cream? Her Continental specialties as well as her all-American Brownies, Carrot Cake and Lattice-Top Apple Pie fly off the shelves at her Manhattan bakery-cafe. What are her secrets for rich-tasting, nondairy loaf cakes, layer cakes, pies and tarts, cookies and Passover specialties? After much testing, she recommends unsalted kosher margarine (which makes a luscious chocolate mousse), vanilla soy milk (for a smooth and spicy Pumpkin Pie ) and powdered coffee "creamer" (in Strawberry Tea Bread and Rugelach). Pareve bakers should be delighted with the results, and Schechter's 90-plus recipes will also please vegans and the lactose intolerant. Instructions are clear and user-friendly, except for the more complicated cakes when one must search different chapters for the components of a recipe. With her creative reworking of many old favorites, Schechter does, indeed, prove that pareve baking can be "delicious and elegant." 16-page color insert not seen by PW. (Sept.)