• cellenly on July 16, 2025

  “The recipes in this book were originally published in Maida Heatter’s New Book of Great Desserts (1982) and Maida Heatter’s Book of Great American Desserts (1985)” on page x of intro. I’m not sure if all cakes from these two books are captured in this book, but certainly most were and I suspect pretty much all. I did a comparison with the great American dessert book, and there was only 1 cake that didn’t make it into this book. (Frozen fudge cake from the chocolate cake section).

• Donna2u on March 13, 2014

  I love this book. This and The Cake Bible are the only ones I use for cakes. Includes recipes for sweet breads, yeast cakes, ice cream and sauces. 's Heatter gives very detailed information for a successful outcome, with wonderful stories of the cakes origin or development. You can not go wrong with a Mida Heatter recipe.

Notes about Recipes in this book

• East 62nd Street lemon cake

  • mfto on December 30, 2011

    I do not own this book but there are several online copies. I am a lemon lover so, of course, this cake is a hit with me.

  • bwhip on May 25, 2017

    We've tried a bunch of other lemon cakes, but we keep coming back to this one again and again. Perfection. The texture/crumb is just right, and the lemon flavor from the cake and glaze is fantastic. I like to increase the lemon zest to three lemons rather than the two in the recipe, but either way it's excellent.

• The best damn lemon cake

  • SugarTreeBaking on May 08, 2019

    Delightful tea cake! Be sure to let it sit a day, flavor intensifies over time.

• Walnut cake

  • Lepa on May 09, 2019

    This is everything I wanted in a walnut cake. It has a mild buttery flavor accented with nutmeg and brandy. It is full of walnuts and the walnut coated pan makes a wonderful crunchy crust. This is going into the permanent rotation. The baking time, btw, is a bit off. My cake was done in an hour and twenty-five minutes but five minutes less might have been perfect.

• The farmer's daughter's cake

  • jenmacgregor18 on March 18, 2025

    I pulled this cake from the oven a bit early after testing it, but unfortunately, it turned out pretty dry. I came across a few others on the Mad About Maida blog who faced the same issue. Maybe it didn’t have enough fat to flour? This was a rare failure for me from one of Maida’s recipes.

• Old-fashioned chocolate icing

  • jenmacgregor18 on March 18, 2025

    I made this for the Farmer’s Daughter cake. I wouldn’t attempt that cake again, but the icing was delicious.

• Cowtown chocolate cake

  • jenmacgregor18 on January 21, 2015

    My mother reported it was the best chocolate cake she'd ever had! My favorite too. Very rich & chocolaty.

• Chocolate sour cream icing

  • jenmacgregor18 on April 04, 2022

    creamy, rich chocolate icing that isn't too sweet. I preferred this one to King Arthur Flour's version, but both are very good.

• Irish whiskey cake

  • Lepa on May 13, 2019

    This is such an odd, and compelling, little cake. I didn't have the narrow loaf pan Maida recommends and I was concerned the cake wouldn't cook in the middle so I made three small loaves. They each took about 50 minutes to bake. I refrigerated them overnight, as recommended, so I could cut them. They seemed hard and unappetizing when I took them out but then I toasted the cakes and added a slick of butter and they are fantastic. The cake is dense with orange peel, raisins and pecans. In addition, it has a lovely taste from mace, whisky and butter. Caraway seeds provide a nice little crunch. It's the perfect cake to eat with some coffee or tea. I usually have a tiny bite of cake and put the rest aside for my family but I cannot stop eating this!

• Sauerkraut chocolate cake

  • jenmacgregor18 on January 29, 2015

    I did NOT like the little bits of sauerkraut in the cake.

• California carrot cake

  • angrygreycat on December 09, 2018

    Made this because I was looking for a smaller recipe than my go-to carrot cake from The Happy Baker (which makes a huge cake). This cake tastes lovely with the spices, nuts, and pineapple. It is a bit on the sweet side for me, it contains a lot of honey and doesn't have the common cream cheese frosting to tone down the sweetness. It also stuck to the bundt pan despite my greasing and flouring it. It appeared to be where pineapple came in contact with the pan. Not sure that I would make again, but if I did I would probably use loaf pans instead. Then I could line with parchment.

• Tomato soup cake

  • Lepa on May 22, 2019

    My mother in law makes a version of this cake and my husband loves it so when I saw a lonely can of tomato soup in my cupboard I decided to try this recipe. It is a rich, delicious spice cake. Maida suggests a chocolate frosting but we don't love frosting and skipped it. The cake was perfect- not too sweet.

• East Blue Hill blueberry coffee cake

  • angrygreycat on August 21, 2018

    Made this for book club. Other club members seemed to like it and even took the leftovers home. I felt it was way too sweet - the sweetness seemed to mask any blueberry flavor. I don't think I would make it again.

• Cranberry upside-down cake

  • angrygreycat on September 14, 2018

    Made this with frozen cranberries and it worked great. Loved the jelly topping on top of the cranberry. Nice tartness comes through and released from the pan cleanly following the directions in the recipe. Would make again.

• Zucchini loaf from Seattle

  • angrygreycat on August 08, 2018

    Made this for book club. Makes a very generous loaf. Easy recipe and very nice tasting. No need to even get out the mixer.

• Joan's pumpkin loaf

  • hillsboroks on February 06, 2021

    This pumpkin loaf came together quickly but I was a bit disappointed in the flavors. The dates and spices were more subdued than I expected. Also the instructions say to bake two 8 inch pans 60-65 minutes but based on the way the looked and smelled I pulled them out of the oven after only 30-35 minutes and they were already a bit over baked. I will start checking them at 25 minutes next time.

• Whole wheat banana bread

  • Lepa on June 08, 2019

    This is pretty good. I ground too much mace and decided it wouldn't hurt to throw it in and, in retrospect, that was a bad idea because the flavor dominated the others. I would make this again but it's not my favorite banana bread.

• Dutch honey bread

  • Lepa on November 13, 2019

    We love spicy, old fashioned cakes and this was a nice version filled with cloves, ginger, cinnamon, raisins and orange peel. This is a bit sweeter than I normally like but it was so nice with a cup of coffee (and my house smells marvelous!!)

• Georgia pecan bread

  • Lepa on May 15, 2019

    This is more like bread than cake because it doesn't have much fat. We enjoyed it toasted with butter. It was good and easy but not as good as other cakes/breads in this book.

• Fig bread

  • lawrencecharcuterie on December 16, 2021

    Fits fine in my largest 9x5 stoneware bread pan. No risk of spilling over. Versatile, can be paired with butter, cheese or a nice jam.

• Banana carrot loaf

  • lawrencecharcuterie on September 23, 2024

    Excellent recipe. Can also make six large muffins plus one small bread pan.

• Blueberry muffins

  • Rachaelsb on August 04, 2018

    So easy to make. Not too cakey..lots of blueberries in a bite. great texture.

  • angrygreycat on August 07, 2018

    Made this tonight as a change from my normal blueberry muffin recipe. Nice texture, not too sweet, good proportion of blueberries to batter. It was done at the 20 minute mark. She suggests making it in a muffin pan with no liner to improve crust, but I used muffin cups and they were fine.