Cake

Best served at a big family breakfast, this coffee cake rings in the first morning of the new year in Greece. You can easily recognize the cake by its tiered shape, with a small round cake set on top of a large round cake. It is usually flavored with anise seed or mahlab (the ground pit of a Mediterranean wild cherry). The Greek tradition is to serve the cake to the youngest first, then the next to youngest, and so on, working up in age, and the person who finds the hidden coin or trinkets will have good luck for the year.

Charlie Trotter, Charlie Trotter's, Chicago, Illinois
Lee Jones, The Chef's Garden, Huron, Ohio (carrots) A semifreddo is basically an ice cream cake, and Chef Trotter uses carrots, chocolate, and spices as unexpected partners in his version. Star anise enhances the sweetness in the carrots and adds a distinctive hint of licorice to the rich chocolate. There are no egg yolks in this recipe—it's the meringue that gives the semifreddo a smooth texture.

The delicious breadcrumb crust was probably created when white flour wasn't readily available in Friuli.

In this delicious dessert, tender spice cake is layered with maple-sugar frosting, candied pecans, and a salty-sweet caramel sauce

My friend Marie-Hélène Brunet-Lhoste is a woman who knows her way around food. She's a top editor of the Louis Vuitton City Guides (and one of the restaurant critics for the Paris edition), so she eats at scores of restaurants every year, and she's a terrific hostess, so she cooks at home often and with great generosity. There's no question that she's a great home cook, but for me, she's the most frustrating kind of cook: she never follows a recipe (in fact, I don't think there's a cookbook to be found on her packed bookshelves), never takes a note about what she does, and while she's always happy to share her cooking tips, she can never give you a real recipe—she just doesn't know it. I've watched her in her kitchen, in the hopes of nabbing a recipe by observation, but it's impossible. Like so many really good cooks, Marie-Hélène starts off with a set of ingredients that could be annotated and recipe-ized, but, once she starts mixing, stirring, boiling, baking, or sautéing, she makes so many mid-cooking adjustments that you just have to throw up your hands and content yourself with being the lucky recipient. And so it was with this apple cake, which is more apple than cake, rather plain but very appealing in its simplicity (the chunks of apple make a bumpy, golden top) and so satisfying that we all went back for seconds. Despite knowing that it was futile, I asked for the recipe, and, of course, Marie-Hélène didn't really know. "It's got two eggs, sugar, flour, and melted butter—oh, and rum," she said. "I mix the eggs and sugar together and then I add some flour, some butter, some flour, and some butter." When I asked how much flour and butter, I got a genuinely apologetic shrug, and when I asked what kind of apples she used, the answer was, divers, or different kinds. Since there were only a few major ingredients, I thought I could figure out the recipe—and I did! (Although not on the first—or second—shot.) I've added baking powder to the mix (and I have a feeling Marie-Hélène might have too) and a drizzle of vanilla, which you can skip if you want. What you don't want to skip is the pleasure of having diverse apples. It's really nice to mix up the fruit, so that you have some apples that are crisp, some soft, some sweet, and some tart.

"My fiancé and I just love the coconut cake at the Shubox Cafe in nearby Cedar Grove," Tammy L. Drukker of North Caldwell, New Jersey. "The cake is tender and moist, and the cream cheese frosting is tangy and rich. I have yet to find a comparable recipe, so I hope the restaurant will share theirs." At Shubox Cafe, this dessert is known as Awesome Coconut Cake, aptly named by one of the cafe's best customers. To make this recipe, you'll need to buy one 15-ounce can of sweetened cream of coconut. Some of it is used in the cake; be sure to save the rest for the Cream Cheese Frosting.

Brownie-like cakes are layered with malt-fudge sauce, chocolate-malt crumbs, and charred marshmallows in this Dr. Seuss-like dessert. To help support the sweet structure, the dessert is assembled in a springform pan. Timing note: The assembled cake needs to chill overnight and has to stand at room temperature for a few hours before serving.

The combination of chocolate and cinnamon gives this treat its Mexican flavor. The cake needs to freeze overnight, so be sure to plan ahead.

Carrot cake was the inspiration for this delicious dessert. Grated zucchini, which makes the cake extra-moist, takes the place of the carrots.

This simple cake can be sliced and served or toasted before serving. For the best texture, use a medium-fine polenta.

In Sicily, the long-ago homeland of immigrants who first brought cassata cake to America, the cake often has candied fruits, citrus liqueurs, and a glazing of marzipan.

This is a delicious, very delicate cake. It's served for dessert everywhere in Charleston, but I like it as a morning cake or afternoon snack. The recipe was named for a small but influential group of French Protestants who fled persecution by their Catholic countrymen and settled lands that became South Carolina more than a century before the Revolutionary War.

I spent some time in Knoxville and got to know firsthand how pleasant the people are and how proud they are to maintain the tradition of the apple stack cake. Everyone knows it, and the routine that they follow to make and serve it is serious business. It's an unusual and labor-intensive cake. First of all, the dough is rolled out like a cookie. It bakes into a pretty hard disk that will get mildly saturated with dried apples reconstituted with spices and sugar. The apples can't be fresh, and cheating the drying process is not acceptable. Electric fruit dehydrators save the effort of sun-drying apples on the porch or rigging an elaborate clothesline system in the attic—all methods I was told about by people who have seen it done. One important element of the stack cake is timing. It must be wrapped and left in the refrigerator at least overnight, longer if possible. Whether you wrap it with wax paper and dish towels, aluminum foil, or plastic wrap, one way or another, keep it well covered so the moisture won't escape.

Instead of frosting, this tender cake is topped with coconut whipped cream. A red hibiscus sauce adds vibrant color—and a tangy flavor.

Tender chocolate cake is layered with raspberry jam and rich chocolate ganache (a mixture of melted chocolate and whipping cream) in this great dessert. Fresh raspberries make a pretty and easy topping.

Dulce de leche, a rich caramel sauce popular in Latin countries, flavors the filling and also serves as a soft glaze for the bars. A sprinkling of sea salt turns this dessert into a craveable salty-sweet treat.

Baked Alaska is called an "omelette norvégienne" in French when made in the oval shape of an omelete. However, this dessert is done in a conical shape to emulate a volcano; hence its name. The top of a "volcano" is adorned with a hollowed-out lemon half that is filled (as soon as it comes out of the oven) with warm brandy, which is ignited, and the dessert is brought flaming to the table. The lemon mousseline cake, used here to hold the ice cream in the center, can be made a day or two ahead and stored in a plastic bag to keep it moist. If you prefer, a standard genoise or a sponge cake or pound cake can be substituted for the mousseline cake, as can ladyfingers. The volcano bakes quickly, in 10 to 12 minutes, and should be brought to the table as it comes out of the oven. Although the egg whites shouldn't be beaten until the last moment, the ice cream and cake can be assembled ahead and kept covered in the freezer.

If you're lucky enough to have a persimmon tree, you're guaranteed to have plenty of gorgeous persimmons come autumn. Or, if you have a neighbor with one, you're bound to find a bag of persimmons on your doorstep one fall day. The prolific trees are especially striking when the leaves drop and the traffic-stopping bright-orange orbs are still clinging to the bare, gnarled branches, silhouetted against a clear autumn sky. Even if you don't have a tree, or a neighboring one that you can benefit from, you might have seen persimmons at the market. Most likely they were Hachiya persimmons, the most common, elongated-shape variety. It's the one I recommend for this cake. They must be squishy soft before they can be used. If you buy them rock-hard, leave them at room temperature until they feel like water balloons ready to burst. When ready, yank off the stem, slice each persimmon in half, then scoop out the jellylike pulp and purée it in a blender or food processor.

This all-purpose sponge cake has a wonderfully rich flavor and golden color, thanks to the almond flour. For a variation, instead of white-chocolate whipped cream and coconut flakes, try lightly sweetened whipped cream, sliced strawberries, and chocolate shavings. Or you can fill the cake with a half recipe of lemon curd (in which case you'll only need two-thirds of the frosting to cover the top and sides of the cake). Plan to make the cake at least several hours or up to a day ahead so the frosting firms up and the flavors meld. The frosting needs to chill for several hours, so make that first and bake the cake while frosting is in the refrigerator. When making the frosting, be sure the heavy cream is cold and chill the bowl and whisk attachment for at least 15 minutes. Whipped cream is fragile, and the heat created by whipping the cream can weaken its structure. Well-chilled ingredients and equipment will counteract the heat, making for stable whipped cream. See our related story for more information and sources for gluten-free ingredients.