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Top 25 Best Classic and Famous Cakes and Pastries

Cake & Pastry Resources (106) Top 25 Cakes & Pastries Top 25 Pastry Bakeries & CafÉs

"Let them eat cake." - commonly attributed to French queen Marie Antoinette.

"All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much." - George Harrison.

"Let's face it, a nice creamy chocolate cake does a lot for a lot of people; it does for me." - Audrey Hepburn.

CAKE is a form of sweet dessert that is typically baked. In its oldest forms, cakes were modifications of breads, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate, and that share features with other desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.

Typical cake ingredients are flour, sugar, eggs, butter or oil, a liquid, and leavening agents, such as baking soda and/or baking powder. Common additional ingredients and flavourings include dried, candied, or fresh fruit, nuts, cocoa, and extracts such as vanilla, with numerous substitutions for the primary ingredients. Cakes can also be filled with fruit preserves or dessert sauces (like pastry cream), iced with buttercream or other icings, and decorated with marzipan, piped borders, or candied fruit.

PASTRY is the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder, and eggs. Small tarts and other sweet baked products are called "pastries."

Pastry may also refer to the dough from which such baked products are made. Pastry dough is rolled out thinly and used as a base for baked products. Common pastry dishes include pies, tarts, quiches and pasties.

Pastry is differentiated from bread by having a higher fat content, which contributes to a flaky or crumbly texture. A good pastry is light and airy and fatty, but firm enough to support the weight of the filling. When making a shortcrust pastry, care must be taken to blend the fat and flour thoroughly before adding any liquid. This ensures that the flour granules are adequately coated with fat and less likely to develop gluten. On the other hand, overmixing results in long gluten strands that toughen the pastry. In other types of pastry such as Danish pastry and croissants, the characteristic flaky texture is achieved by repeatedly rolling out a dough similar to that for yeast bread, spreading it with butter, and folding it to produce many thin layers.

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    Cake & Pastry News, Reviews & Resources
  • Baumkuchen.
  • Baumkuchen - is a kind of spit cake from German cuisine. It's also a popular dessert in Japan. The characteristic rings that appear when sliced resemble tree rings, and give the cake its German name, Baumkuchen, which literally translates to "tree cake" or "log cake".
  • Berliner (doughnut) - Berliner Pfannkuchen. Photo: Rainer Zenz.
  • Berliner (doughnut) - Berliner Pfannkuchen - German doughnut with no central hole, made from sweet yeast dough fried in fat or oil, with a marmalade or jam filling like a jelly doughnut, and usually icing, powdered sugar or conventional sugar on top. They are sometimes made with chocolate, champagne, custard, mocha, or advocaat filling, or with no filling at all.
  • Black Forest Cake - World’s Favorite Dessert? - "Dessert lovers from Chile to Pakistan to Fiji claim it as a national treat. How did it get there from the woods of Germany?"
  • Brioche.
  • Brioche - pastry of French origin that is akin to a highly enriched bread, and whose high egg and butter content give it a rich and tender crumb.
  • Baillardran, 55, Cours de l'Intendance, 33000 Bordeaux, France.
  • CANALÉ - the canelé is about two inches high, and is made from sugar, milk, flour, rum and vanilla. Delicious at any time of the day, it is appreciated during wine tastings and can be consumed for breakfast, a snack or as a dessert. Although the production of the canelé began during the 17th century, the little cake became famous only in 1985, when canelé became a brand, deposited by the Brotherhood of the canelé of Bordeaux; and it is now the most eaten of all pastries in Bordeaux, France.
  • Cannoli. Photo: mat's eye.
  • Cannoli - Italian pastries consisting of tube-shaped shells of fried pastry dough, filled with a sweet, creamy filling usually containing ricotta - a staple of Sicilian cuisine.
  • Baked cheesecake with raspberries and blueberries. Photo: zingyyellow.
  • Cheesecake - a sweet dessert consisting of one or more layers. The main, and thickest, layer consists of a mixture of a soft, fresh cheese (typically cottage cheese, cream cheese or ricotta), eggs, and sugar. If there is a bottom layer, it most often consists of a crust or base made from crushed cookies (or digestive biscuits), graham crackers, pastry, or sometimes sponge cake. Cheesecake may be baked or unbaked (and is usually refrigerated). Cheesecake is usually sweetened with sugar and may be flavored in different ways. Vanilla, spices, lemon, chocolate, pumpkin, or other flavors may be added to the main cheese layer. Additional flavors and visual appeal may be added by topping the finished dessert with fruit, whipped cream, nuts, cookies, fruit sauce, chocolate syrup, or other ingredients.
  • Cronut.
  • Cronut - croissant-doughnut pastry invented and trademarked by Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York City. The pastry is made by frying a laminated dough in grape seed oil. The fried pastry is then sugared, filled, and glazed.
  • croissant that's the star of a Polish parade - "The flaky, buttery, layered croissant is irrevocably tied to France, its country of origin. But every 11 November, on the Feast of St Martin, the Renaissance-era city of Poznań in western Poland comes alive with an extravaganza starring a very special horseshoe-shaped pastry; the Rogale swiętomarciński, or St Martin's croissant."
  • Cupcakes.
  • CUPCAKE - small cake designed to serve one person, which may be baked in a small thin paper or aluminium cup. As with larger cakes, icing and other cake decorations, such as sprinkles, may be applied.
  • 'Death by Chocolate' Cake Will Live Forever - "The chef Marcel Desaulniers, who died last month, had an over-the-top approach to dessert, a sweet counterpoint to the guilt-ridden chocolate culture of the time."
  • Doughnut. Photo: Evan-Amos.
  • Doughnut - or donut is a type of leavened fried dough. It is popular in many countries and is prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and franchised specialty vendors. Doughnuts are usually deep fried from a flour dough, but other types of batters can also be used. Various toppings and flavorings are used for different types, such as sugar, chocolate, or maple glazing. Doughnuts may also include water, leavening, eggs, milk, sugar, oil, shortening, and natural or artificial flavors.
  • Dundee cake.
  • Dundee cake - famous traditional Scottish fruit cake with a rich flavour. Much favored by Winston Churchill. The cake is often made with currants, sultanas and almonds; sometimes, fruit peel may be added to it. The top of the cake is typically decorated with concentric circles of almonds.
  • Éclairs. Image courtesy: Two Safeway Chocolate Eclairs.
  • Éclairs - created in the 19th century by chef Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the first celebrity chefs of French culinary history. Éclairs is a pastry made with choux dough filled with a cream and topped with a flavored icing.
  • Elizabeth's Cake Emporium.
  • Elizabeth's Cake Emporium - "Luxury Wedding Cakes." We create wedding cakes, celebration cakes and cupcakes that are adorned with the most realistic edible jewellery, sugar flowers, lace, pearls and gems.
  • Goth Cakes - "Some bakers are embracing the dark side."
  • Gucci Osteria Cookies.
  • Gucci Osteria Cookies - "Gucci Osteria is delighted to announce the launch of a new series of cookies and jellies. Inspired by Mother Nature and by sweet childhood memories, Karime Lopez and her team have conceived a bespoke collection of beautifully flavoured natural jellies and delicious cookies."
  • Kaiserschmarrn.
  • Kaiserschmarrn - (Emperor's Mess) is a sweet dessert that takes its name from the Austrian emperor (Kaiser) Franz Joseph I, who was very fond of this kind of fluffy shredded pancake.
  • Katharine Hepburn Brownies - "Katharine Hepburn Brownies are named after the famous actor. The story goes that gossip columnist Liz Smith got the recipe from the actress to publish in her column. That was about 25 years ago and since then these brownies have only grown in popularity. This brownie recipe appears in countless cookbooks and with good reason. They are delicious. While the top crust is dry and cracked, underneath they are sweet, moist, and chewy, with a pleasing chocolate flavor. You can eat them warm, at room temperature, or even cold."
  • Kvæfjord cake. Photo: Kjetil Ree.
  • KvÆfjord cake: Norway's best cake - "Made with vanilla sponge, meringue, almonds, custard and whipped cream, Norwegians love this cake so much they nicknamed it 'the world's best cake'."
  • Macaron.
  • Macaron - French sweet meringue-based confection made with egg white, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder or ground almond, and food colouring. The macaron is commonly filled with ganache, buttercream or jam filling sandwiched between two biscuits (cookies).
  • Madeleine (cake).
  • Madeleine (cake) - small rich sponge cake, baked in a fluted tin or mould and decorated with coconut and jam. Probably named after Madeleine Palmier, 19th-century French pastry cook, who was a cook in the 18th century for Stanisław Leszczyński, whose son-in-law, Louis XV of France, named them for her. Marcel Proust describes Madeleines as "a little shell of cake, so generously sensual beneath the piety of its stern pleating..." Read also: MADELEINE MOMENT.
  • Oreo: The cookie that can't be perfected - "In her new cookbook, The Cookie that Changed My Life, Nancy Silverton takes the classic Oreo to a new level with her recipe for the ultimate chocolate cookie."
  • Original Sacher-Torte size III in a wooden box: €50.
  • Original Sacher-Torte - since 1832. "The world-famous original in the attractive wooden box - a sweet greeting from Vienna."
  • Panettone.
  • Panettone - type of sweet bread loaf originally from Milan, usually prepared and enjoyed for Christmas and New Year in Italy, southeastern France, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Malta, Montenegro, Albania, Eritrea, Georgia, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and is one of the symbols of the city of Milan. Main ingredients: Flour, candied fruits, raisins.
  • Pastel de nata.
  • Pastel de nata - is a Portuguese egg tart pastry, common in Portugal.
  • A French pastry shop window.
  • PASTRY - the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder, and eggs. Small tarts and other sweet baked products are called "pastries."
  • PASTRY AT AMAZON.COM'S GROCERY & GOURMET FOOD - as of August 26, 2023: over 1,000 results.
  • The surprising truth about Pavlova's origin.
  • Pavlova - meringue-based dessert named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. It is a meringue dessert with a crisp crust and soft, light inside, usually topped with fruit and whipped cream.
  • Persian love cake - "Persian Love Cake: a fragrant rose cake flavored with freshly ground cardamom and almond flour, and topped with crushed pistachios and rose petals."
  • Profiterole. Photo: Stu Spivack.
  • Profiterole - cream puff (US), or chou à la crème is a filled French choux pastry ball with a typically sweet and moist filling of whipped cream, custard, pastry cream, or ice cream. The puffs may be decorated or left plain or garnished with chocolate sauce, caramel, or a dusting of powdered sugar. Savory profiterole are also made, filled with pureed meats, cheese, and so on.
  • Rustico leccese. Puff pastry filled with mozzarella, béchamel, tomato, pepper and nutmeg.
  • Puff pastry - in baking, a puff pastry is a light, flaky, unleavened pastry containing several layers of fat which is in solid state at 20 °C (68 °F). In raw form, puff pastry is a dough which is spread with solid fat and repeatedly folded and rolled out. It is sometimes called a "water dough" or détrempe. The gaps that form between the layers are a result of the puff pastry rising as the water evaporates into steam during the baking process. Piercing the dough will prevent excessive puffing, and crimping along the sides will prevent the layers from flaking all of the way to the edges.
  • Demel Demel’s Sachertorte 6 (large) in a wooden box: €51.
  • Sachertorte - since 1786. Demel, K. u. K. Hofzuckerbäcker. Vienna, Austria. Online store.
  • Salad cakes are the latest weird food craze in Japan - The Telegraph.
  • 'Her floral decorations set a new standard in the business,' a restaurateur said. 'She changed the way people thought about cakes.' Photo Courtesy Weinstock family.
  • Sylvia Weinstock Cakes - since 1983. Internationally celebrated cake designer Sylvia Weinstock makes cakes that astonish the palate, dazzle the eye, and reward the spirit. Sylvia Weinstock made decorative cakes for a variety of celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian and Martha Stewart. She avoided using fondant in her cake decorations, calling it "cheap and easy"; instead, she focused on buttercream, sugar flowers, and stenciled patterns. Sylvia Weinstock was dubbed “the Leonardo da Vinci of wedding cakes" by Bon App63233;tit.
  • Sylvia Weinstock, the ‘da Vinci of Wedding Cakes,’ Dies at 91 - "She produced floral-draped architectural works in the shape of rose-studded topiaries, baskets of speckled lilies and bouquets of anemones." The New York Times.
  • Blueberry tart.
  • TART - a baked dish consisting of a filling over a pastry base with an open top not covered with pastry. The pastry is usually shortcrust pastry; the filling may be sweet or savoury, though modern tarts are usually fruit-based, sometimes with custard. Tartlet refers to a miniature tart; an example would be egg tarts. Examples of tarts include jam tarts, which may be different colours depending on the flavour of the jam used to fill them, and the Bakewell tart.
  • Tarte tropézienne.
  • Tarte tropÉzienne - dessert pastry consisting of a filled brioche. It was created in 1955 by Alexandre Micka, a pâtisserie owner in Saint-Tropez. The pastry was named by actress Brigitte Bardot while she was there filming And God Created Woman.
  • Tres-Leches - the Perfect Cake? - "An Appalachian twist on a classic Latin American dessert connects cultures and identities for a pastry chef. 'For me the soaked cake really comes alive, and gets personal, in tres-leches cake. If baba au rhum is the king, this, my friends, is the queen.'"
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