All hail the queen of cake

I’m an avid home baker, self-taught – though not really: Maida Heatter was my teacher. Beginning in the mid-1970s and into the 1990s, she was to baking what Craig Claiborne was to cooking: first stop on a recipe search. 

My mother didn’t bake (too fattening) and my grandmother was pretty much a one-trick pony (amazingly dainty crescent-shaped rugelach). I, on the other hand, derive a perhaps