THE GOOD HOUSEKEEPING ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF DESSERTS, edited by Mildred Ying, William Morrow and Co. (books cannot be ordered though Morrow, only through bookstores), 320 pages, $25, cloth.

You better not be on a diet when you peruse this book, because you'll probably be in the mood for a dessert shortly after turning th first page. There are so many delightful items offered, 200 in all, that you will have a problem deciding which you prefer.

Each recipe has step-by-step photographs that will guide even the most inexperienced cook through the process of dessert making. A final chapter presents detailed general instructions, tips and basic recipes.

Other chapters cover special desserts; cakes; pies, tarts, pastries and hot fruit desserts; cookies; and frozen desserts. As Ying, who is director of the Food Department at the Good Housekeeping Institute, informs us, many of these desserts have appeared in the pages of this woman's service magazine, and all have been carefully tested in the magazine's kitchen.

Standout dishes include raspberry and vanilla mousse, fresh-apple souffle, strawberry-orange charlotte, white chocolate and cranberry trifle, Pavlova (a meringue with a kiwifruit topping), double-chocolate mousse cake, pumpkin-crunch torte, triple chocolate torte, chocolate truffle cake, six-layer toffee torte (finely chopped toffee bars crown six contrasting alternating layers of cake and whipped cream) and mocha roulade.

We might also mention the filbert and maple-cream roll, Irish-cream triangle cake, cannoli cake, mixed-nut fruitcake, coconut-banana cream pie, and Florida lime pie and grape-and-kiwifruit tart (with contrasting shades of two green fruits).

This is a lavishly illustrated collection of desserts that is sure to perk up lethargic dessert menus. Desserts like these are so outstanding that entrees seem superfluous.

STARS DESSERTS, Emily Luchetti, HarperCollins, 10 E. 53rd St., New York, N.Y. 10022, (212) 207-7000, 267 pages, $27.50, cloth.

Luchetti has been the pastry chef at Jeremiah Tower's celebrated Stars restaurant in San Francisco for the past four years. Although the shadow for Tower and Stars looms over this cookbook benevolently (the desserts are qualified as Stars', and the book has been dedicated to Tower, who has written a Foreword), Luchetti emerges as a highly creative cook in her own right.