My Most Favorite Dessert Company Cookbook: Delicious Pareve Baking Recipes [Hardcover]

Doris Schechter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 4, 2001

As all its loyal fans will tell you, there is only one place to go in New York City for great pareve desserts: Doris Schechter's My Most Favorite Dessert Company. For more than twenty years, Doris has provided her customers with delectable cakes, pies, tarts, cookies, and muffins -- proving that dairy-free desserts can be delicious.

With this book, Doris shares the secrets of her renowned pareve baking, offering more than ninety recipes that can be made easily in any home kitchen. Forget the disappointing pareve cakes and cookies you may have endured in the past: these are rich, indulgent desserts worthy of even the most special celebrations. From an old-fashioned Apple Cake to a sophisticated Velvet Chocolate Cake to traditional holiday favorites (including an entire chapter on Passover baking), Doris provides recipes you'll love to bake, serve, and enjoy year after year. Illustrated with sixteen pages of lush color photos, My Most Favorite Dessert Company Cookbook will tantalize, tempt, and teach kosher bakers and sweets-lovers alike.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Doris Schechter was born in Vienna to Jewish parents. Forced to flee Austria for Italy, she and her family eventually settled in the United States. In 1982 she opened My Most Favorite Dessert Company in Great Neck, New York, and in 1986 moved the bakery to Manhattan, where it is now combined with a restaurant. Doris lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; 1st edition (September 4, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060197862
• ISBN-13: 978-0060197865
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,053,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars worst cookbook I've ever used, November 14, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: My Most Favorite Dessert Company Cookbook: Delicious Pareve Baking Recipes (Hardcover)

This is one for the used book store. I got this because the recipes were non-dairy. The author attributes her baking prowess to her Viennese heritage, but I didn't find any evidence of an accomplished baker in this book. Each recipe is preceded by an incredible write up by the author. Example: the author's recipe for chocolate "buttercream" frosting, "When I first tried this, I thought it was chocolate mousse, it's that good!". When I tried it, I thought it was just a greasy mess. I tried the recipe twice, just to be sure I was following her directions exactly. Other recipes I tried: her brownies - anemic, nowhere near chocolatey enough, vanilla cake - bland and boring, and genoise -dry. I've had much better results with regular recipes where I've substituted non-dairy ingredients.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very disappointing, March 16, 2003

By 

Carol (Teaneck, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Most Favorite Dessert Company Cookbook: Delicious Pareve Baking Recipes (Hardcover)

I agree with the other reviewers. The recipes don't work. Unfortunately, I didn't read the reviews before I bought the book. I tried the Hamantashan recipe - twice. The dough is nothing but a sticky mess. Refrigerating overnight does nothing but result in a cold sticky mess. It can't be worked with and it's a waste of ingredients and time. Obviously, there is something wrong with the recipe. A suggestion to the author - try it yourself, try working all the recipes yourself using the book. Presumably they worked for you originally. Something has gone wrong in publication.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very, very disappointed, August 24, 2002

By 

T2D (Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Most Favorite Dessert Company Cookbook: Delicious Pareve Baking Recipes (Hardcover)

Try recipes: orange cake, chocolate chip cookies, lemon meringue and lemon bars, brownie, and sugar cookies. None turns out good (the author indicates that they are the best and the favorite). I feel like something missing in the recipes. I tried some recipes twice just to make sure but got same result. NOT recommend this book to anyone.