Let me preface this review by stating that I have been cooking/baking for almost 40 years and I have had my share of successes and failures. I made this cake with the suggestions of other bakers such as additional creaming time, and extra milk. I doubled the recipe to make a 2 layer cake. I have to say it was the worst cake I ever made. It did not really rise all that much, was way too dense (denser than my pound cake which everyone loves and requests I bake.) I did not know how badly it would taste. I even went through the trouble of making a homemade blackout cake filling to make it a black and white cake. When I cut it, it did not have a tender crumb and the taste was terrible. I had to throw everything away. I really don't know what I did wrong and how many people rated this 5*. Maybe I will try it again and repost with what went wrong.

Disgusting! Tasted like cornbread! Very disappointed!

This would be a 5 star recipe if the cake was a actually a white cake like I thought I was baking. But it's not. It's a spice cake with no spices added. It's a fantastic basic recipe and you can truly use it for a gazillion different things. So, if it was called "basic cake" I'd give it 10 stars. Super moist and fluffy with a great crumb! I did add the extra milk that so many recommended and it definitely needed it. It would have been very dry without that. I used a phenomenal buttercream frosting recipe I found on another website. It was very edible and even delicious - just not what I was after when I searched for this recipe. It would also be wonderful with buttermilk instead of milk. If I were spicing it up - which I may well next time, I'd just use nutmeg.

This might be the worst white cake recipe I have ever made. The cake could not be more dry. The kids took one bite then just ate the frosting! It needs oil or applesauce or something. I only cooked it for 16 minutes. Oh well, it was made with love.

First let me say that clegg_connie@yahoo.com needs to read the recipe. Vanilla is right there in the ingredients, duh... salt is in the butter, duh again. Secondly, for some silly reason I think the picture should match the recipe. The first pic in the email I was sent showed a red (looks like sugar coated something. Then I log on and see a layer cake with some sort of red center. I may try this but the recipe should look like the finished product. There is definitely nothing that corresponds to either picture shown.

I followed the recipe exactly. It made 18 cupcakes; they were moist and had good flavor. They were so good, my husband ate them warm, no frosting.

This is a wonderful cake and easy to make also. I have to agree with other members that it tastes like a really good sugar cookie. Thank you Scottosman, for this great recipe and I will let all my friends know about it. iota

I hate it when people write these heated, rude reviews when they dislike something. It seems so negative! I'm just going to be honest. I baked this cake for my husband's birthday, and since the ratings were so stellar, I expected big things. I didn't overbake, I followed the recipe exactly. The cake turned out extremely dense (not always a bad thing), and DRY... bad combination. He ate it, the flavor wasn't bad and I didn't taste too much baking powder in the after bite, which is positive... but the consistency of the cake was not at all what I envisioned. It was extremely dry and thick. I ended up throwing about 80% of the cake away, we just didn't want it. I would try adding extra milk or perhaps a tiny bit more butter to help things out if you're going to go with this recipe. Try it first before you serve it at a gathering or an important event. The cake was pretty OK once I microwaved it and ate it warm... but who does that at a birthday party? At any rate, I usually go with what most people say, and I was surprised that I disliked the recipe. This is NO offense at all to the creator, and again I'm not some jerk trying to bad mouth a recipe. Just being honest!

Easy to make. Appeared moist when done but were oddly chalky/dry. Flavour was like raw pancake batter.

I swapped out the flour with 1 cup and 2 tbsp's of whole wheat flour, and it turned out pretty good, had almost a nutty taste. The cupackes didn't make it to see the next day..