New to Our Cookbook Shelves

The Kosher Baker
Producing flavorful and appealing kosher desserts has been a challenge in Jewish households throughout the ages. Without access to butter, cream, milk, cheese, yogurt, or other dairy products, creating a tasty and memorable dessert for family and friends requires more than simple substitutions and compromises. Now pastry chef and teacher Paula Shoyer provides the inspiration and innovation to turn the age-old challenges of parve baking into delectable delights in her one-of-a-kind kosher cookbook.

The Kosher Baker is your indispensable kitchen companion to a wide range of dairy-free desserts, from family favorites and time-honored holiday classics to stylish and delicious surprises of Shoyer's own careful creation. It even includes desserts not usually found on a kosher table, such as creamy key lime pie, luscious flan, and rich tiramisu. You'll find everything from cookies, biscotti, breads and muffins to pastries, tarts, fancy cakes, and mousses. Shoyer guides you through more than 160 mouth-watering recipes and expands every non-dairy baker's repertoire with simple, clear instructions and a friendly yet authoritative voice.

The Kosher Baker is organized as a tutorial into three primary sections--Quick and Elegant Desserts, Two Step Desserts, and Multiple Step Desserts--allowing the busy home baker to choose a dessert based on both taste and time constraints. The first section presents the fundamentals of simple kosher baking in the form of everyday treats like Amaretto Cookies, Orange Tea Cake, and Apple Pastry. The next two sections teach increasingly more challenging desserts, from a Challah Beer Bread Pudding with Caramel Sauce to Chocolate Babka. A special fourth section includes chapters on baking Challah, Passover desserts, and no-sugar-added desserts.

The Kosher Baker has something for everyone in the Jewish household for any occasion or holiday. It spills over with detailed information, including tips on storage, freezing, and thawing; tools; must-have ingredients; and tips and techniques. Anyone baking for those with special dietary needs such as food allergies or diabetic concerns will also find recipes to love in this comprehensive collection. It even includes recipes for nut- and gluten-free desserts, and vegan desserts.

Urban Pantry
Urban Pantry is a smart, concise guide to creating a full and delicious larder in your own home. It covers kitchen essentials, like what basics to keep on hand for quick, tasty meals without a trip to the store, and features recipes that adapt old-fashioned pantry cooking for a modern audience. Avid chef and gardener Amy Pennington demystifies canning and pickling for the urban kitchen and provides tips for growing a practical food garden in even the smallest of spaces. Her more than sixty creative recipes blend both gourmet and classic flavors while keeping economy in mind.

Urban Pantry holds sustainability at its center: Take advantage of local ingredients, eliminate wasteful kitchen practices, and make the most out of the food you buy or grow.

**Special note: Actress Gwyneth Paltrow recommended this book on her blog, GOOP, and gave this a big boost on to the best seller charts!**

MasterChef Cookbook
In the nationwide search for America’s best amateur chef, thousands of home cooks from across the country created their signature dish for an awe-inspiring panel of judges. Doctors, businessmen, students, construction workers, and stay-at-home moms alike put their heart on the plate for a chance to become the country’s first-ever Master Chef.

From the Mississippi Delta to the Midwest, exotic ethnic dishes to all-American staples, these talented home cooks showed the judges—and the world—what this country is really cooking. Now you can cook with the contestants and judges in your very own kitchen with the MasterChef Cookbook. Learn how to master the basic skills that define any chef; discover an exciting array of ingredients that will inspire new creations; and find out what the judges would have cooked if they were given the same challenges faced by the contestants.

From Cinnamon-Orange French Toast to Vietnamese Chicken and Rice; Southern-Fried Pork Chop to New England–Style Bouillabaisse; Bittersweet Chocolate Soufflé to Flaky Apple Pie, the MasterChef Cookbook offers more than 80 savory, sweet, and scrumptious recipes that prove some of the nation’s most delicious food comes from its most humble kitchens.