15 Cakes You Forgot You Were Obsessed With
Chocolate, vanilla and red velvet are classics, but sometimes you need to mix up your dessert game. These sweets don't disappoint. Trust.
Forget Dunkaroos — these treats bring on the nostalgia, hardcore.
1-2-3-4 Cake
The genius in this cake lies in its name, which serves up a catchy reminder of the essential ingredients: 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, and 4 eggs. Who needs a stinkin' recipe when you've got that? Oh, wait — you do, because those aren't the only four ingredients you'll need. But still, it's a helpful way to keep from constantly flicking back to the recipe for every single step.
Get the recipe from Delish.
Lazy Daisy Cake
Now this is a serious throwback — to 1914, that is. This sheet cake, topped with a broiled frosting made from brown sugar, coconut and cream, popped up as a reader-submitted recipe in the Chicago Sunday Tribune that year. It wasn't until the 1930s and '40s, though, that it started getting really popular, according to cookbook-slash-baking-historic-guide, American Cake. Wartime rationing made many people ditch the fancy layer cakes in favor of one-bowl treats, like this.
Get the recipe from Geoff's Baking Blog.
Mayonnaise Cake
Everything about the name seems so wrong — mayo?! In a cake?! — but a cup of the eggy condiment is the secret to a moist treat that's too fudging good to resist. (If you can't stomach the thought of mayo, sour cream also works wonders.)
Get the recipe from Delish.
Poke Cake
There's something oddly satisfying about poking holes in a cake and filling it with caramel sauce, pudding or chocolate. Every bite's like a molten chocolate cake — on crack.
Get 10 recipe ideas from Delish.
Crepe Cake
It's hard to tell what's more impressive: The fact that it looks like there are 100 layers in this cake — or the fact that you spent an untold number of hours making all of those crepes. If baking from scratch isn't really your thing, we've got a killer shortcut using *gasp!* store-bought tortillas.
Get the real-deal recipe from Delish.
Brooklyn Blackout Cake
You didn't have to grow up in New York — or even visit Ebinger's Bakery, which made it famous — to hear legend of the Brooklyn Blackout Cake. Named after blackout drills in the borough during WWII, this cake epitomizes chocolate-on-chocolate decadence that'd rival even (Dare we say it?) Death By Chocolate desserts. Just know that if you decide to bake this baby from scratch, it's a 24-hour affair. But it's WORTH IT.
Get the recipe from Kitchen Project.
Dump Cake
This retro favorite has had a Pinterest renaissance, but if you're not the pinning type, you may be unaware of just how awesome this one-pan treat is. As the less-than-appealing name implies, you dump the ingredients in the baking dish, pop it in the oven, and 40ish minutes later, enjoy a warm slice of cake. Zero effort, major reward.
Get 51 recipe ideas from Delish.
Surprise-Inside Cakes
Remember back to, oh, 2013, when surprise-inside cakes were trending big-time? People could gawk at your frosting job, but nothing compared to the look on their faces when you took out that first slice, revealing a daisy, star or even — if you're extra-ambitious — a rainbow-colored heart.
Get the recipe from Delish.
Apple Stack Cake
You might know this cake by a region — Kentucky Apple Stack Cake, Appalachian Apple Stack, and so on — but no matter the name, the treat's essentially the same: layers of apple spice cake sandwiching an apple butter-like filling, then topped with powdered sugar or more apple butter. It gets its name because of the filling, and because it was a popular wedding cake in the Southern mountain region, where guests each brought a cake layer. The more layers you had, the more popular the bride, American Cake reports.
Get the recipe from The Bitten Word.
Jelly Roll Cake
Here's an evolution they didn't teach you in school: Before there were jelly roll cakes, there were jelly cakes. Bakers in the 1800s made thin layer cakes using their dripping pans (resourceful!), topping them with jelly, according to American Cake. Somewhere along the way, someone decided to roll the cake up and slice it, creating the treat we know — but don't bake nearly enough — today.
Get the recipe from Delish.
Tres Leches Cake
If you've never tried this vanilla-lovers' paradise, you need to get on that, ASAP. It's soaked in three kinds of milk (whole, sweetened condensed and evaporated, in case you're counting), so it's basically the antithesis of the stereotypical dry cake.
Get the recipe from Delish.
Icebox Cake
This may be a no-bake cake, but it never fails to impress. Layers of cookie and whipped cream take an overnight stay in the freezer, turning the crunchy treats pillow-y soft — and creating a dangerously addictive (like, eat the whole platter in one sitting over one episode of Veep dangerous). You've been warned.
Get recipe from Delish.
Gooey Butter Cake
Fudgy brownies, gooey cookies — there's something irresistible about that not-quite-set texture, which the Gooey Butter cake captures perfectly. Rumor has it a German baker got the proportions of his cake wrong, but people loved the custard-like sweet so much it became a hit. And a St. Louis tradition.
Get the recipe from the Junior League of St. Louis.
Tunnel of Fudge Cake
More than 200,000 people wrote to Pillsbury, begging for the recipe to the Tunnel of Fudge cake after it took second place in the 1966 Pillsbury Bake-Off. Since then, the fudge-filled cake has become a full-blown obsession for chocoholics everywhere. Molten chocolate cakes have nothing on this OG.
Get the recipe from Pillsbury.
Hummingbird Cake
Red velvet may get all the glory, but true Southerners are just as familiar with Hummingbird Cake. Beyond being Southern Living's most-requested recipe of all time, this pineapple, banana and walnut-studded confection is so beloved it's been reimagined as pancakes, truffles, and — as a double-whammy of nostalgia — a poke cake.
Get the recipe from Delish.
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