Cake Flour

Active time: 20 min Start to finish: 40 min

Moist, billowy, light as a feather, and perfumed with fresh orange juice and zest, this is an incomparably refreshing cake. If you live in a part of the world where oranges grow, you could not ask for a more appropriate and aromatic adornment than orange blossoms, but fresh daisies also convey the lighthearted spirit of this lovely cake. A serving contains only 129 mg. of cholesterol.

Chocolate cake, chocolate ganache, and chocolate mousse team up with fruit in this incredible dessert. Begin making the cake one day ahead. Enjoy the extra mousse later.

This simple white cake has a lemon curd filling and glaze. Big cakes like this are typical special-occasion desserts in the South.

Cake-making equipment and ingredients can be found at cake and candy supply stores. Be sure to use cake flour, not all purpose flour, and begin preparing the cake two days ahead. Buy one 1-ounce bottle of gel base color in the shade called Bakers Rose to tint both the frosting and the fondant a pale pink. Plastic drinking straws are used to support the middle and top tiers. Buy the straight—not bendable—kind.

Pumpkin and apricot are a winning combination in this cake; it's topped with a spiced cream cheese frosting. For decoration, place several dried apricots between sheets of plastic wrap, and using a rolling pin, roll to flatten. With scissors, cut out leaf shapes from the apricots, and arrange them on top of the cake.

Only 1/3 cup of flour is used in this recipe, so the cake has a deliciously dense texture.

Italian fruitcakes with Frangelico chocolate sauce If you don't have the mini Bundt molds called for, oversize muffin cups (about one-cup capacity) can be used instead. Begin preparing this at least a week ahead.

With the addition of a citrus custard as a filling and a sprinkling of coconut over the frosting, this would be known as a Robert E. Lee cake.

This recipe can be prepared in 45 minutes or less. These tender biscuits are especially light when made with cake flour.

Similar to zuppa inglese (an Italian trifle), this impressive dessert layers an amaretti-and-cream filling and orange segments between syrup-soaked sponge cake. Many of the components can be made ahead; start with the filling so that it can chill overnight.

My mother learned to cook this bread during the Depression, when nothing was wasted — especially overripe bananas. We clamored for this treat so often that she frequently bought extra bananas and let them get almost black. I've discovered that overripe bananas can be peeled, mashed, and frozen, then defrosted whenever I want to bake up this memory.

"The Farm of Beverly Hills has the most incredible, delectable giant brownies!" says Cindy Grand of San Francisco, CA. "They taste more like fudge with a light, crunchy surface. Would you help me get the recipe?" These are probably the fudgiest brownies we've ever tried—in fact, they seemed too rich to serve in giant squares, so we've cut them smaller. They taste even better the day after they're baked.