Intro -- Contents -- Foreword -- So, You Want to Bake a Cake, Huh? -- How to Use This Book -- You'll Need Some Equipment -- The Man Catcher-Sour Cream Pound Cake: Your Introduction to Cake Baking -- A Word about Pans -- How to tell if your cake is done and how to get it out of the pan -- True Cake Lore -- What's in That Cake? A Briefing on Ingredients, with Tips -- Chapter One: EASY CAKES FOR EARLY ENTHUSIASTS -- Brown Sugar Pound Cake: How Come Ya Taste So Good, Now? -- Missy G's Sweet Potato Pound Cake: A Lesson in Re-caking -- Key Lime Cake -- Travelin' Cake -- Procrastinatin' Drunken Monkey Banana Bread (New Technique Alert! Plumping Dried Fruit with Rum) -- The Barefoot Contessa's Sour Cream Coffee Cake: Culinary and Cinematic History-All in One Recipe! -- Argroves Manor Coffee Cake -- Miss Saigon Cinnamon Almond Coffee Cake -- Dorie Greenspan's Swedish Visiting Cake (New Technique Alert! Toasting Nuts and Folding) -- Dorie Greenspan's Rum-Drenched Vanilla Cakes -- Of Office Cake and Office Cake Eaters -- Gingerbread, Glorious Gingerbread -- Gingerbread -- ATF Gingerbread -- Like, Baking with Chocolate: A Few Things You Should Know -- Chocolate Pound Cake -- Mary Carole Battle's Mother's Wacky Cake with Seven-Minute Frosting: Chocolate Cake with Less Fuss (New Technique Alert! Separating Eggs) -- Cocoa Bread with Stewed Yard Peaches -- Chapter Two: BRING ME BUNDTS AND BRING ME MORE SPICE AND VICE!: How to bake a drop-dead gorgeous cake with hardly any effort. Plus spice, fruit, and drunken cakes-so very, very, nice! -- Gimme Them Purdy Cakes! A Brief History of the Bundt Pan -- Tunnel of Fudge Cake -- Butter Rum Cake -- The Naughty Senator: Peppermint and Chocolate Rum Marble Cake (New Technique Alert! Marbling) -- Paula Deen's Almond Sour Cream Pound Cake -- Coffee Spice Cake -- Office Cake Lore.

Hey, Lady-Nice Rack! Things you might like to know about what makes little girls so nice -- Spanish Meringue Cake (New Technique Alert! Beating Egg Whites) -- Honey Spice Cake with Rum Glaze -- Holiday Honey Cake: Another Adventure in Re-caking -- Araby Spice Cake -- Black Walnut Cake: Smells Like a Pancake, but Tastes Like a Cake! -- Banana Cake with Chocolate Frosting: Smells Like Banana Bread, but Tastes Like Cake! -- Fresh Apple Cake: Ah, Yes, This Is Another Family Story -- The Fruit Voted "Mr. Popularity": Baked Apple -- Paula Deen's Grandgirl's Fresh Apple Cake from Georgia: Coconut Haters Beware-You Might Actually Like This Cake -- Peach Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting: Yet Another Score for Those Small-Town, Community Cookbooks! -- Faux Fruitcake: A Fruitcake for Those Who Despise Fruitcake -- Martha Washington's Great Cake: The Cake That Launched the Cake Project and This Here Book! -- Chapter Three: BREAK FROM CAKE -- OH, you'd better believe it happens . . . The Mistress of Cake Sometimes Gets Sick of Cake -- Cowboy Cookies -- Peanut Butter Fingers -- Oatmeal Cherry Cookies -- Salty Oatmeal Cookies -- Chewy Butterscotch Bars -- Fried Pies -- Chapter Four: LAYER CAKES, ANGEL FOOD CAKES, MODERATELY SINFUL CAKES, ALL ON THE ROAD TO HEAVEN AND HELL -- Welcome to the Fancy-Pants Zone! Hard Hat Required -- My Aunt Di -- Poor Niece Melissa's Humble Attempt at Re-creating Aunt Di's Bittersweet-Chocolate Frosted Layer Cake (New Technique Alert! Unmolding and Dividing Layers, Frosting Layer Cakes) -- Whipped Cream Cake -- Honey Buttercream and Apricot Jam Cake: Another Option for the Whipped Cream Cake -- Coconut/Not Coconut Cake: A Compromise of Congressional Proportions -- Alma's Italian Cream Cake: Yes, It's Got Coconut in It! And Wanuts! -- Sour Cream Spice Cake with Orange Butter Frosting -- More Cake Lore.

Devil's Food Cake with Quick Fudge Icing and Raspberry Jam: If You're Going to Sin, Sin Big -- Like, Baking with Chocolate: Part II -- Dark-Chocolate Red Velvet Cake: For Those for Whom Plain Red Velvet Cake Is Too Jejune -- Triple Chocolate Orange Passion Cake -- German's Chocolate Cake: Achtung! Nicht Deutsch! -- Angel Food Cake: Not as Hard or as Caloric as You Think -- Chocolate Angel Food Cake: For That Saint with PMS -- Lady and Lord Baltimore Cakes: A Demi-Royal Experience with Divinity Frosting -- Lane Cake -- Appalachian Stack Cake: You'll Never Make Fun of Meemaw and Pawpaw Again -- Graham Cracker Cake -- Dark Chocolate Peppermint Pattie Cake -- Stephen Pyles's Heaven and Hell Cake: The Liberace of Layer Cakes -- So, You've Baked Many a Cake, Huh? -- Acknowledgments -- Sources -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Table of Equivalents.