Cakes, from birthday to wedding and double-chocolate to funfetti, are a permanent fixture in almost every culture's food canon. They're festive, sweet, made to be shared, and ultimately, just really delicious. Cakes seem to have started with the basics (chocolate and vanilla), but they've evolved infinitely and morphed into thousands of types.
We've gotten to know cakes that are complete and total crowd-pleasers, like tres leches, devil's food, lemon, cinnamon-sugar coffee cake, and dozens more. However, there's a whole host of other cakes that deserve our attention, but they fly under the radar because they're, well, a little weirder. They often take more effort and preparation, and it's easy to just use the recipes we know and love to please those around us with a fantastic dessert.
This is a call to action; put down your well-worn baking cookbooks and try out one of these five weird cakes. They're each amazing.
Dark Molasses Gingerbread Cake. This cake uses molasses to add a rich and complex edge to a gingerbread cake. It's a gorgeous cake and goes perfectly with a thick cream cheese frosting whipped into a frenzy.
Glazed Grapefruit Cake. This citrus fruit is cut into rounds and broiled on top of the citrus-flavored cake. It's then covered with a basic glaze. The cake will shine at a party, and you'll be back to make it again very soon.
Lady Baltimore Cake. This cake was featured in Owen Wister's 1906 novel aptly called "Lady Baltimore." It's a cake from another time, to be sure. The cake is labour-intensive and complex, but that's part of what makes it so unique. It's got a meringue frosting and a filling made with meringue, figs, raisins and nuts.
Heaven and Hell Cake. This cake is true decadence. Part Devil's Food and part Angel's food, the two cake sections are layered with a peanut butter frosting. It's an amazing cake to make for a surprise party because on the outside, it looks like any other chocolate cake. Cut into it, though, and you'll find gorgeous and delicious stripes of black, white and peanut-brown.
Ikea's Daim Cake. If you've eaten at Ikea in the last decade, chances are you've tried the absolutely irresistible Daim Cake. Daim is a european chocolate bar made of toffee and milk chocolate, like a Skor bar but better, and this cake uses bits of Daim as well as an almondy crust to draw furniture-shoppers straight to the cafeteria. Make it at home and save yourself the journey to Ikea!
