246 better cake recipes

A show-stopping 4-layer banana cake with stiff meringue folded into the batter, filled with vanilla custard, and frosted with a silky cooked flour-butter frosting laced with almond extract. This is banana cake at its most dramatic.

A layered coffee cake built on a yellow cake mix and sour cream batter, swirled with a crunchy brown sugar streusel packed with chocolate chips, walnuts, and cinnamon. Easy enough for a weekday morning, fancy enough for brunch guests.

Fresh pineapple upside-down cake with Madeira wine caramel, cornmeal batter, and extra egg yolks. Baked in a cast iron skillet for a crisp, buttery edge.

Peach dessert cake with fresh peaches baked into a lemon-scented batter, topped with cinnamon sugar and chopped nuts. Serve warm with whipped cream for a summer treat.

Blue cornmeal breakfast cake topped with fresh blueberries and baked golden at high heat. Light and fluffy with whipped egg whites folded into the batter.

Fresh apple cake with macerated apples that release their natural juices into the batter for an extra-moist crumb. Cinnamon, allspice, and chopped nuts in a simple loaf or tube pan. The fall apple cake worth pulling out the bushel.

Skip the pastry and make this easy apple dessert. Tart Granny Smith apples baked under a buttery cake-like batter with cinnamon, nutmeg, and walnuts.

Shredded carrots, crushed pineapple, and chopped nuts fold into spiced cake batter for a moist bundt that's cinnamon-scented and ready in under an hour.

Upside-down apple cake with caramelized Granny Smith slices, applesauce-enriched batter, and a cinnamon cream cheese topping. Served warm for the ultimate fall dessert.

Buttermilk snack cake with mini marshmallows and chocolate chips folded into the batter, topped with a brown sugar walnut crumble. A one-pan crowd-pleaser.

Crispy Japanese shrimp and vegetable tempura fried in a light, lacy cake flour batter. Served with a homemade tentsuyu dipping sauce with grated daikon, this is the real deal from scratch.

Rich bittersweet chocolate cake that makes its own mousse-like frosting from the same batter. Just 8 ingredients, no mixer tricks, and it keeps in the fridge for days.

Hot fudge pudding cake that bakes its own chocolate sauce underneath. A vintage one-pan dessert where cocoa batter and a sugar-cocoa sauce magically separate in the oven.

Old-fashioned date and pecan cake baked low and slow in a tube pan. More fruit and nuts than batter, with a dense, rich texture similar to fruitcake.

Mashed ripe bananas swirl through vanilla cake batter with cinnamon-almond streusel in this bundt-style brunch coffeecake. Dust with powdered sugar for an elegant finish.

Two-tone sheet cake with a vanilla cream cheese batter and Hershey's chocolate syrup topping baked together for a marbled, fudgy finish using egg whites only.