‘Next Great Baker’ winner’s book is sweet

Lia Holter’s new cookbook has 45 recipes in it, and two secret ingredients.

She is perhaps reluctantly willing to share one: she adds a touch of pumpkin pie spice to her zucchini bread.

When she was a girl, she loved the zucchini bread made by her mother’s best friend, Linda. Later, after she became a prize-winning baker, Holter could never quite re-create the flavor. Finally, she asked Linda for the answer, and now it tastes just right.

You’ll have to buy the book to learn Holter’s other secret ingredient. It’s in her recipe for pie crust — she says it both adds a depth of flavor and also makes it flaky.

Holter is the owner of Made. by Lia Craft Bakery in Florissant, Mo. She first came to national attention in 2014, when she and another local baker won the “Next Great Baker” baking co