Every cake here is one of five methods. Knowing which one you are making tells you what will go wrong.

Method	How the air gets in	Texture	Cakes
Creaming	Sugar crystals cut air into solid butter	Tender, close, buttery	victoria sponge · pound cake · devils food cake · lamingtons · lemon drizzle cake · sour cream coffee cake
Foaming	Whipped whole egg or separated egg	Light, dry, springy	genoise · angel food cake · swiss roll · dobos torte · opera cake
Oil and chemical	Baking powder or soda alone	Moist, keeps for days	hummingbird cake · olive oil cake · wacky cake · gingerbread cake · honey cake · Carrot Cake
Hybrid foam	Meringue folded into an oil or cheese base	Very light, very tall	chiffon cake · japanese cotton cheesecake
Reverse creaming	Fat coated onto flour before liquid	Fine, flat-topped, velvety	birthday layer cake · crumb cake

Two more sit outside the scheme entirely. A baked custard — new york cheesecake and basque burnt cheesecake — is not aerated at all. And butter mochi has no wheat starch in it, so it has no crumb structure to aerate.

The constraint	Cakes
One bowl, thirty minutes' work	wacky cake · texas sheet cake · olive oil cake · plum torte
Feeds twenty-plus	texas sheet cake · butter mochi · crumb cake · tres leches cake
Has to travel	chocolate bundt cake · pound cake · gingerbread cake · fruitcake
Make it days ahead	fruitcake · honey cake · gingerbread cake · sachertorte
No wheat	butter mochi · Gluten Free Grains for the substitutions
No egg	wacky cake
A birthday	birthday layer cake · red velvet cake · devils food cake · black forest cake
Showing off	opera cake · dobos torte · sachertorte · yule log

A cake's structure decides what you can put on it. Filling a foam cake with a heavy buttercream crushes it; frosting a wet cake makes soup.

• Carves and stacks — birthday layer cake · pound cake · red velvet cake · devils food cake
• Soaks — genoise · tres leches cake · lemon drizzle cake · black forest cake · opera cake
• Will not hold a heavy frosting — angel food cake · chiffon cake · japanese cotton cheesecake
• Needs nothing on it at all — olive oil cake · plum torte · madeleines · financiers · fruitcake

The same four ingredients, three completely different results, and the difference is entirely method.

	new york cheesecake	basque burnt cheesecake	japanese cotton cheesecake
Oven	160 °C, water bath	210 °C, no bath	150 °C, water bath
Base	Biscuit crumb	None	None
Texture	Dense, sliceable	Molten centre	Soufflé
Fails by	Cracking	Not burning enough	Deflating
Cheese per cake	1 kg	900 g	250 g

Substituting a tin is the most common improvised change and the most common cause of a raw middle. Match the volume, then adjust the time.

Tin	Volume	Batter	Bake time shift
20 cm round, 5 cm deep	~1.4 L	~700 g	baseline
23 cm round	~1.9 L	~950 g	5 min less
20 cm square	~1.9 L	~950 g	same as 23 cm round
23 × 13 cm loaf	~1.7 L	~850 g	15–20 min more, 10 °C lower
10-cup bundt	~2.4 L	~1.6 kg	15 min more
23 × 33 cm sheet	~3.5 L	~1.8 kg	10 min less
12-cup muffin tin	~1.4 L	~700 g	bake 18–22 min

Fill any tin no more than two-thirds. More on pans at baking equipment, and on oven behaviour at ovens and heat.

Job	Quantity for a 20 cm three-layer cake
Filling between layers	150 g per layer
Crumb coat	200 g
Final coat	500 g
Piping	200 g extra

That is about 1.3 kg of buttercream — roughly 450 g butter and 900 g powdered sugar. The types are set out on Types of Frostings, and the cream cheese one, which behaves differently from all the others, on Cream Cheese Frosting.

• angel food cake — no fat at all, and an ungreased tin
• basque burnt cheesecake — deliberately scorched, no base, no bath
• birthday layer cake — reverse creaming, and the crumb coat
• black forest cake — kirsch in three places, by German law
• butter mochi — amylopectin instead of a crumb
• chiffon cake — an insurance salesman's oil cake, patented 1927
• chocolate bundt cake — the pan is the recipe
• crumb cake — twice as much topping as cake
• devils food cake — natural cocoa plus soda, and the red tint
• dobos torte — five thin layers, buttercream, a caramel lid
• financiers — brown butter, egg whites, better the next day
• fruitcake — 70% fruit, fed for months, keeps for years
• genoise — the foundational European sponge, built to be soaked
• german chocolate cake — named for a man, not a country
• gingerbread cake — molasses, three gingers, better on day four
• honey cake — lekach and medovik, two cakes, one ingredient
• hummingbird cake — banana, pineapple, pecan, no mixer
• japanese cotton cheesecake — a soufflé that mostly holds
• lamingtons — why the sponge must be stale
• lemon drizzle cake — granulated sugar, hot cake, cold syrup
• madeleines — the hump, and the hour it lasts
• new york cheesecake — a baked custard, and why it cracks
• olive oil cake — the oil is an ingredient, not a medium
• opera cake — seven layers, 4 cm, judged in cross-section
• pineapple upside-down cake — a caramel made in the tin
• plum torte — the most-requested recipe the NYT ever ran
• pound cake — a pound of each, and no chemical lift
• red velvet cake — buttermilk and vanilla, faintly cocoa
• sachertorte — a boiled sugar glaze, not a ganache
• sour cream coffee cake — two-thirds of the streusel goes inside
• sticky toffee pudding — dates broken down with soda
• swiss roll — roll it hot and empty, fill it cold
• texas sheet cake — frosted hot, so the layers merge
• tres leches cake — a sponge built to be flooded
• victoria sponge — equal weights, weighed off the eggs
• wacky cake — no egg, no butter, no milk, mixed in the pan
• yule log — a Swiss roll and a decorating problem

Already elsewhere in the vault: Carrot Cake, Cakes With Vegetables, rye chocolate coffee cake, Cake (flavour research).

Theory: cakes · flour · gluten · sugar in baking · baking fats · eggs · yeast and leavening · baking equipment · ovens and heat

Finishing: Types of Frostings · Cream Cheese Frosting

Sibling folders: Cookie recipes · Pie and tart recipes · Recipes by ingredient · Recipes by method

Selling them: cottage food baking · Baked goods · bakeries

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