Ultimate Cake Recipes

This crowd-pleaser is easier than it looks. (You only make one batter.) Garnish the strawberry-frosted cake with double-dipped berries to hint at the festive stripes hiding inside.

Neapolitan Party Cake

Sheer three-layered audacity put this creation from a Saint Paul bakery in our hall of fame: buttermilk-cocoa cake, candylike chocolate frosting and creamy caramel sauce. Originally published: December 2005.

Cafe Latte's Turtle Cake

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St. Louis pastry chef Nathaniel Reid gives pound cake a chic, patisserie-style makeover. Your trusty loaf pan never had it so good.

Double Chocolate Pound Cake

Candied Lemon Pound Cake

Earl Grey and Raspberry Pound Cake

Yogurt Pound Cake with Apricots and Coconut

Hazelnut and Milk Chocolate Pound Cake

Hello, color! Sunny peaches and ruby raspberries dance across  a tender buttermilk cornmeal cake. It's divine with whipped cream—if you're into that kind of thing.

Peach Melba Upside-Down Cake

This three-layer wonder stays extra moist thanks to butter and buttermilk. The blue-ribbon recipe is from Teresa Reese of Osceola, Nebraska.

Coconut Cake 

This quick twist on the classic German chocolate-cherry cake uses boxed cake mix and cherry preserves. Don't skip the kirsch or brandy; it adds that signature Black Forest flavor.

Quick Black Forest Cherry Cake

Buttermilk and sour cream lend moistness and tang to our old-fashioned chocolate cake. All that's missing are the birthday candles.

Three-Tiered Fudgy Chocolate Cake recipe

Combine white cake mix and Oreos for a super-easy dessert. The recipe, from a Spearville, Kansas, reader, was among the winners in a Midwest Living® chocolate recipe contest.

Cookies-and-Cream Cake

Book club meeting. Mother's Day brunch. A well-deserved raise. Cream cheese frosting is always the answer, especially when it's on a 6-inch cake that's perfectly sized for life's everyday celebrations.

Cutie-Pie Carrot Cake

Patty’s grandmother sifted together the flour and baking powder three times before adding them to the batter. We had good results just whisking them together. This recipe comes from Patty Pinner's cookbook Sweets (crownpublishing.com).

My My’s Brown Sugar Pound Cake

A Mexican standard and guaranteed backyard crowd-pleaser, our brown-sugar sheet cake is soaked in milky syrup, chilled, then topped with whipped cream and berries.

Tres Leches Cake

Billowy Meringue Frosting tops a moist and buttery lime-flecked cake whose subtle coconut flavor comes from canned cream of coconut.

Key Lime Coconut Cake with Marshmallow Frosting

Dessert or coffee cake? It’s up to you. A hint of orange rounds out the flavors.

Chocolanutty Banana Cake

This utterly unforgettable autumn cake layers moist chocolate-pumpkin cake, luscious milk chocolate ganache and fluffy pumpkin-spice whipped cream. The recipe comes from Minnesota blogger Amanda Rettke (iambaker.net).

Chocolate Pumpkin Cake recipe

See a short video about how to make this cake

A subtle swirl of fresh raspberries infuses this homemade angel food cake with light fruit flavor. Like all angel food cakes, it has no fat or cholesterol.

Raspberry Swirl Angel Food Cake

No one will believe you baked this beautiful, moist cake in your slow cooker! The homemade cream cheese frosting is lusciously delicious, but you can substitute canned frosting in a pinch.

Carrot Pineapple Cake

This recipe has been perfected through the years. We think you’ll agree that it is the moistest, richest, “chocolatiest” cake ever. Of the many ways to frost it, we vote for our classic Chocolate-Sour Cream Frosting — though you can certainly use your family’s favorite.

Our Best-Ever Chocolate Cake

This nutty layer cake is a favorite dessert with Midwest Living® readers. Whipped cream tops a moist filling of pumpkin, brown sugar, pecans, butter and more whipping cream.

Pumpkin-Praline Layer Cake

With its subtle mix of warm spices, vanilla, maple and citrus (and tangy white icing), this is no ordinary zucchini cake. The recipe comes from The Vegetable Butcher cookbook, by Cara Mangini.

Zucchini Olive Oil Cake with Lemon Drizzle 

This tall layer cake, with a medley of flavors from nuts, fruit and spices, comes from the kitchens of Silver Dollar City theme park near Branson, Missouri. Add a sprinkling of pecans on top for even more crunch.

Hummingbird Cake

Crystallized ginger and powdered dry ginger add welcome zing to an American classic. Fanning the pineapple like flower petals is striking, but also functional--no bare spots between rings.

Double-Ginger Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Mix just six ingredients, including lemon-lime carbonated beverage, to make this lovely, citrusy cake from an Alta Vista, Kansas, reader.

Lemony Prairie Cake

The many colors of Kool-Aid, a Nebraska invention, give an array of choices for this angel food cake that starts with a mix. Pink lemonade Kool-Aid adds pastel prettiness and a delicate flavor to Tinted Angel Cake. The tropical punch version gives the cake flavor that's as intense as its color.

Tinted Angel Cake

Ruth Smiley of Parke County, Indiana, gave us her recipe for Maple Syrup Cake, which she makes in a fluted tube pan. We mixed up an easy maple syrup icing to drizzle over the top. 

Maple Syrup Cake

This moist white cake combines toasted pecans and refreshing orange peel with cranberries. Orange peel flavors the thick cream cheese frosting, too.

Cranberry Layer Cake

Begging for a crown of birthday candles, this layer cake has two kitchen tricks working in its favor. Mayonnaise yields a moist crumb; sour cream keeps sugary buttercream in tangy check. (Note: This recipe makes enough frosting to fill and frost the entire cake [top and sides]. To leave the sides unfrosted as we did in our photograph, just make a half batch.

Country Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting

A Canton, Ohio, reader contributed this recipe for a favorite brown sugar cake that is often served at family gatherings.

Buster Brown Cake with Delicious Icing

This nutty comfort cake from Sharon Buckner of Rhineland, Missouri, gets a sugary top and caramelized gooey bottom as it cooks. Don't be surprised by the thick batter; it will bake into a moist, dense cake.

Fresh Apple Cake

This wonderfully moist and generously spiced six-layer cake is a showy spin on humble applesauce cake.

Pioneer Wedding Stack Cake

This moist beauty begs for a mug of afternoon tea. Fennel seeds add the faintest hint of licorice flavor, just enough to make the cake stand out from the other Bundts in the room. We like the sweeter flavor of Meyer lemons in this cake. Look for them sold in bags at large supermarkets. If you substitute regular lemons, reduce the zest to 2 tablespoons.

Toasted Fennel-Lemon Cake

We gussied up chocolate cake mix with sour cream and red food coloring, then crowned this cake with a white chocolate-cream cheese frosting and toasted coconut.

Fabulous Red Velvet Cake

Deborah Biggs of Omaha completes this amazingly moist dessert with Maple Whipped Cream. 

Spiced Pecan Sweet Potato Cake

This recipe for an old-fashioned pound cake with a sugar-browned crust comes from a Benton Harbor, Michigan, reader, whose family eats the cake warm from the oven.

Old-Fashioned Pound Cake

Cocoa powder, coffee and sour cream combine to make this moist, dark three-layer cake. The Unforgettable White Chocolate Frosting (at end of recipe) is irresistible, but if you prefer, you can use a regular butter frosting.

Dutch Mocha Chocolate Cake

Pink lemonade concentrate gives a summery twist to classic strawberry shortcake. 

Pink Lemonade Strawberry Shortcake

The recipe for this four-layer cake—with a puddinglike filling, unmistakable poppy seed flavor and soft whipped cream frosting—comes from Wisconsin’s White Gull Inn.

Poppy Seed Torte

Cream cheese frosting crowns a rich, moist and nutty carrot cake. Cinnamon and allspice add just the right spiciness.

Best Carrot-Pineapple Cake

With two tender layers and almond-kissed buttercream, this 6-inch cake is the stuff birthday memories are made of—just smaller.

Wee White Layer Cake

Sprinkle moist pumpkin filling with a cake mix topping for a quick and easy cake. The recipe is from Farmer's Inn in Havana, North Dakota.

Pumpkin Pie Cake

Zingerman's Bakehouse in Ann Arbor, Michigan, took a basic chocolate cake and infused a little coffee and bittersweet chocolate to give it a sophisticated flavor.

Hot Cocoa Cake

Pound cakes traditionally are made with a pound each of sugar, butter, flour and eggs. This recipe, from Chicago cookbook authors Barry Bluestein and Kevin Morrissey, uses closer to a half-pound of each main ingredient. "We've also added a bit of milk, so the cake is lighter and moister," the authors say.

Tart Cherry Half-Pound Cake

The memory of a childhood orchard trip inspired Melinsa Murphey of Olathe, Kansas, to create this recipe. The cakes are moist and sweet and quite generously proportioned, so you may want to serve a half-cake to each person (or bake them in muffin cups instead).

Peach Cordial Mini Bundt Cakes

Lemon Butter Frosting tops a summer-perfect cake flavored with thawed lemonade concentrate.

Lemonade Cake

Karen Cope of Minneapolis won a blue ribbon at the Minnesota State Fair for this stunning chocolate-and-marshmallow cake, based on whoopie pie cookies.

Whoopie Pie Cake

Yellow cake mix and butterscotch-flavored pieces create an easy-on-the-cook cake from The Gourmet Grocer in Kansas City, Missouri. Make a smooth Butterscotch Frosting from cream cheese, powdered sugar and melted butterscotch-flavored pieces.

Butterscotch Cake

Chocolate and sweet potato batters are swirled together to make this moist, tender spice cake from Patricia Polley of Columbus, Ohio. Wrap and store the cooled cake overnight for easier slicing. (It's a great alternative to coffee cake for brunches.)

Sweet Potato-Cranberry Cake

This moist three-layer cake stars at any elegant get-together. The recipe is from an Eaton Rapids, Michigan, bed & breakfast.

White Three-Layer Butter Cake

Doris Heikes of Decorah, Iowa, enjoys bringing this dessert to potluck buffets. The tender cake is topped with Browned Butter Icing and sliced almonds or chopped nuts.

Heavenly Chiffon Cake

Cocoa and rum flavor the soft butter frosting that crowns this airy three-layer cake from Elizabeth Varga of Barberton, Ohio. The recipe came from her Hungarian grandmother.

Coffee Nut Torte