Ultimate Cake Recipes

By The editors of MidwestLiving.com
Updated September 13, 2020

Let our 49 cake recipes inspire you with ideas for chocolate cake, red velvet cake, pumpkin cake, coconut cake, carrot cake and other delicious homemade treats.

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Neapolitan Party Cake

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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.

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Poppy Seed Bundt Cake

Credit: Brie Passano
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Angela Garbacz, owner of Goldenrod Pastries in Lincoln, Nebraska, features recipes that adapt to gluten- and dairy-free needs in her new cookbook, Perfectly Golden. This simple, sweet cake reminds her of her time in Poland.

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Cafe Latte's Turtle Cake

Credit: Blaine Moats
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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. 

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Angel Food Cake with Strawberries and Elderflower Cream

Credit: Carson Downing
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To "bring the smell of the field" into this dessert, chef James Bloomfield of Alliance restaurant in Traverse City, Michigan, infuses whipping cream with fresh elderflowers. Get the same effect with a splash of St-Germain.

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Three-Tiered Fudgy Chocolate Cake

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

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Prettier by the pound

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

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Peach Melba Upside-Down Cake

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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.

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Coconut Cake

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

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Quick Black Forest Cherry Cake

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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.

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My My’s Brown Sugar Pound Cake

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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.

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Cookies-and-Cream Cake

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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.

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Cutie-Pie Carrot Cake

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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.

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Tres Leches Cake

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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.

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Key Lime Coconut Cake with Marshmallow Frosting

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

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Chocolanutty Banana Cake

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

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Chocolate Pumpkin Cake

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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.

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Raspberry Swirl Angel Food Cake

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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.

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Carrot Pineapple Cake

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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.

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Our Best-Ever Chocolate Cake

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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.

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Pumpkin-Praline Layer Cake

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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.

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Coffee Nut Torte

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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.

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Zucchini Olive Oil Cake with Lemon Drizzle

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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.

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Hummingbird Cake

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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.

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Fabulous Red Velvet Cake

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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.

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Double-Ginger Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

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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.

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Maple Syrup Cake

Credit: Mark Thomas
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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.

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Cranberry Layer Cake

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

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Country Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting

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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.

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Toasted Fennel-Lemon Cake

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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.

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Pioneer Wedding Stack Cake

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

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Spiced Pecan Sweet Potato Cake

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

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Old-Fashioned Pound Cake

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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.

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Poppy Seed Torte

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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.

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Hot Cocoa Cake

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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.

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Peach Cordial Mini Bundt Cakes

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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).

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Whoopie Pie Cake