Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Now that Christmas is over,

cookie season is done. The rain of cookies has ended. Goodbye cookies. Hello, cakes. Today,

we've got two cookbooks for you covering baked goods, specializing in cakes. Up ahead,

we've got Paul Hollywood from the Great British Bake Off on the

pod. But first, if you find baking a cake intimidating, Dory Greenspan's cookbook, Dory's Anytime

Cakes, is all about simple, homey cakes, not the kind that are as tall as skyscrapers,

sort of dangling nervously as you carry it somewhere.

I'm talking blondies, a simple marble cake, cakes that green span calls welcoming.

She talks to hear now as Robin Young all about that and the perfect cake to bring to a party.

That's ahead.

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It's here and now. If ever cake was to have its moment, it is now. People are riveted to televisions watching not one but a dozen baking shows, bakers racing to create cakes disguised

as a bowl of soup, or waterfalls of cascading fudge, often requiring would-be bakers to look

up ingredients in an online culinary encyclopedia. Why, we ask, can't we just have

simple cake like Grammy used to make? Oh, wait, look, there's a recipe for Grammy's easy cake.

Or at long last, can we have a sheet cake recipe that we can actually handle? Oh, how about the Texas

sheet cake at last? That's the name of it. These are recipes in Dory Greenspan's new

cookbook. She's the author of 15 others, but this is the new Dory's anytime cakes. Brownies are

there, swirly bunt cakes, layer cakes, cakes that have just one layer. Simple cake, she says,

that let their baked in personalities sparkle.

...