i just bought the book by Debbie Brown, 50 easy party cakes. lovely designs! i thought with such a pro, her dense sponge cake recipe in the book (starts with an m? uses eggs, butter, self rising flour and vanilla) would hold up awesome, and as she says, be moist and delicious. i followed the recipe but it was SO dry! it held up great to carving, but after one slice, i slid the rest into the garbage can!!! good thing it was a practice cake. the only thing i can think of that i did differently, was instead of real butter, i used a margarine of about 70% oil fat which i have always heard is still sufficient for baking. did that screw it up? i dont know if i want to retry it and waste all that real butter if it will turn out as dry. i did not overbake. .. who has tried this????

The madeira cake is dry and not moist at all .It happend to me too It was horrible when I baked it and did not have any flavor. I will not used it any more

Me too!! I though I overbaked it even though I was pretty sure I did not. It was great for carving but very dry and tastless. I was dissapointed because she said it was delicious!!! I think I'll use my buttercake recipe for carving next time, it's dense and has a nice flavor...

I use Debbie Browns madeira cake often. I use real butter and it is still a little dry. But I use a lot of buttercream on it and that helps. It is just the BEST cake for carving, so I keep using it. I found that it should be wrapped in greaseproof paper or clingwrap as soon as it has cooled down enough and that improves the moisture. For regular round cakes I use box cakes and it has surprised me time and again by how moist it can be.