'PASTRIES' | A review Delicious story loses its flavor to lack of pie in face

If nothing else, this book will make you hungry.
By SUSAN HALL-BALDUF
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
"Pastries," by Bharti Kirchner (St. Martin's, $24.95)
In "Pastries," novelist Bharti Kirchner describes her heroine's best work like so:
"Thus was born what would become my signature creation: tender, multitiered, a subtle melding of complementary flavors and chile heat, graced with a silken bittersweet chocolate skin, more delicate than a regular chocolate cake, but taller."
Sunya Malhotra's Japanese boyfriend, Roger, named the cake for her. Sunya Cake. It's the best-known, most coveted item on the menu at the cozy, upscale Pastries Cafe, where students scarf down cumin-carrot muffins and professionals stop in for slices of cherry-plum tart in a cashew crust.
But the first thing that happens in the story is Sunya, on the way to making her famous cake, burning a pot of melting chocolate. Burnt chocolate -- could there be a more terrifying symbol of failure?
Sunya has lost Roger to a silken-skinned chick named Kimiko, who reminds Sunya of a well-organized drawer, and now she loses her ability to bake. Everything she touches turns to crud. Her best baker goes on a pouty sabbatical, some guy is stalking her and as Seattle braces itself for street protests against the World Trade Conference, Pastries Cafe is threatened by the imminent arrival of megachain Cakes Plus.
What else can go wrong?
Well, that's about it. Kirchner spices the story with the tale of Sunya's Indian immigrant mother, who was deserted by her husband when Sunya was a newborn, re-created herself as a doughnut maker and now has a younger boyfriend, an immigrant from the Balkans.
What leaves sour taste
And she spoons up a boyfriend candidate for Sunya -- not of heart-stopping Roger caliber, but fun, a film director who continues relating the plot of his (half-baked) movie-in-progress each time they meet.
"Pastries" is as light as the famous Sunya Cake and just as sweet -- though it sags like a souffle when Sunya goes to Japan to learn the art of Zen baking. What fun is conflict if everyone is going to be forgiven in the end by an om-rejuvenated baker? Couldn't she at least hit Roger in the face with a flan first?
The best of "Pastries" is the frantic life behind the serene scenes in the cafe, and the menu. Brown-butter nectarine layer cake. Mango cheesecake. Creme brulee drizzled with persimmon coulis --
OK, you're drooling.