I just love Elizabeth Alston’s Best Baking (Harper Perennial, 2000). I bought it as a bargain book, and it is packed full of great recipes for angel food, chiffon, coffee and pound cakes, and all sorts of tea breads and fruited desserts.
Ms. Alston is the executive food editor at Woman’s Day, and she also wrote Biscuits and Scones (1988) and Breakfast With Friends: Seasonal Menus to Celebrate the Morning (1998), and other books.
All three of these books are out of print now, but so enamored am I of the baking book, that I’m about to order used copies of the other two.
NJ SPICE 
I love Elizabeth Alston’s books, too. Her muffin book was the source for many of my offerings when I had my “All the News That’s Fit to Print with Muffins” business (Sunday paper delivered with home-made muffins). The sour cream raisin muffins flavored with coffee were a personal favorite. Also, the biscuits and scones book is also a little gem. If you get it, be sure to try the hazelnut scones. I never met her when I worked at Women’s Day – I think it was before her time – but I wish I had. Her writing is always clear and direct.
The breakfast book and the biscuits/scones book just arrived on my doorstep, and your recommendations sound delicious, thank you!