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Layer Cakes, Fancy Cakes, Cheesecakes and Chocolate Cakes
Appears in
By Richard Sax
Published 1994
Layer cakes and chocolate cakes figure large in birthday and other celebrations, often becoming family traditions. Many home bakers report that they bake a certain cake, such as a four-layer-high coconut cake, for their children’s birthdays every year. If they dare experiment with another kind, the kids may eat it, but always grudgingly. “When it comes to birthdays, it has to be that cake,” they told me.
With frosting between two, three or even more layers, these cakes are honest, homespun and brash, often concocted with more enthusiasm than finesse—quintessentially American. But while layer cakes are an American tradition, they are a fairly recent one, taking root only since the Civil War. Before that, in the early days of American cooking, cakes were fairly plain because baking at home was not an easy undertaking.