I used to think there were infinite cake flavors, but...

[cimorene]

We've made vanilla and chocolate cakes frequently. Also carrot cake, zucchini cake, banana bread which is actually a cake. Chocolate mousse cake most recently, of course, although that's really more of a pie? Or actually, of a chocolate mousse with some cookie crumbs attached. We have also done red velvet cake, but it turns out without the food coloring this is just kinda vanilla spice cake. Oh, we've had spice cake too, and it's okay, but not the biggest fans.

We should try making lemon cake and orange cake soon, but we haven't yet. I guess lime cake might be a thing? I've seen stuff like mojito- and margarita-inspired cupcakes.

I see yellow cake with the addition of a few types of liquor, and a couple of nut cakes, but they mostly seem to kinda be spice cakes or vanilla cakes that have some nuts in them and on them. There's peanut butter cake, but most of the results seem to be really dense and moist and not even that cakey in texture, really more like a brownie (could still be tasty, but even adding 'light and fluffy' to my search terms didn't seem to help with that).

Oh, and there's also such a thing as coffee-flavored cake of course, which is often combined with chocolate, or frosted with chocolate. We've tried that a couple of times, but haven't found the perfect recipe for it.

We might try this apple cake that we found next, mainly because we have tons of apples to use up, but we're having trouble settling on an icing/glazing because we don't have that much butter left and the recipe wants a peanut butter buttercream that uses tons of both.

But what other cakes are there, really? All the other options that come up when I browse recipe sites seem to be some slight variation on these - in fact, mostly just on chocolate or vanilla really - or a cheesecake, which is another category of thing.

Comments

[phosfate]

Lime cake sounds good!

[aurumcalendula]

re: other types of cakes, I was going to say Cassata Cake, but that probably falls under a sponge cake variation.

Maybe New England Spider Cake? (although that might be closer to cornbread) And now I'm wondering if pancakes might count.

[minoanmiss]

There's Jam Cake, which gets a light fruit flavor from whatever jam you use in it.
There's Lavender Lemon cake, a twist on Lemon
There's Poppyseed cake, or Sesame Seed Cake, or Caraway Seed Cake and so on
There are the olive oil cakes, which taste different because olive oil


There is also Fruitcake but that's a whole other discussion.

:)

[cimorene]

Never heard of jam cake before! I have heard of olive oil cake but I forgot about it. But I suppose there are a wide variety of those, so perhaps it counts as more than one.

[spark]

honeycake

[hebethen]

I don't know how available the ingredients would necessarily be, but perhaps dessert palettes on the other side of the world might be some inspiration -- sesame, red-bean, mung bean, taro, matcha, lotus seed, etc. Red-bean, mung bean, and lotus seed would probably be mostly packing the flavor into fillings rather than being part of the cake, but I have definitely seen the others out in the world. And I am sure there is much more that I simply haven't thought of!

[cimorene]

Well, I don't love the bean-based desserts I've tried but I can easily come by matcha and I love it, so I should definitely try out a matcha cake. (I usually use it in cookies. And I keep meaning to make icecream but forgetting.)

[sporky_rat]

We have also done red velvet cake, but it turns out without the food coloring this is just kinda vanilla spice cake.

...red food coloring? In red velvet cake?

[cimorene]

This is pretty much the standard in online recipes, perhaps because Dutched cocoa is more widespread I guess?

[princessofgeeks]

Carrot cake!

[vass]

Honey cake! (Rosh Hashanah is coming soon.) Poppy seed (often with orange). Sponge lined with cream and strawberry jam. Plum. Caramel (salted or unsalted.) Fruitcake. Choc-mint. Piecaken, if you wish turducken was a dessert. Lime jelly (jello in American) with chocolate frogs and a little licorice ladder, like it's a swimming pool (children's party cake classic.) Bubblegum cake (I don't know how to make it from scratch, but it was my favourite boxed cake mix when I was twelve.)

[cimorene]

Most of these I consider variations of known cakes, or flavors and textures I hate like caramel and fruitcake and gelatin, but I've actually never heard of bubblegum cake at all! However, the recipes I can find just call for "bubblegum flavoring" which sounds pretty suspect tbh. Bubblegum comes in multiple flavors, for that matter.

I have had plum cake, but only made by my late MIL. I'd only read about it in British books before that, and I was really disappointed that it wasn't all that impressive since the tastiness of fresh plums had raised my expectations. It is kind of a coffee cake category cake to my mind, and there are a bunch of similar less-sweet cakes with preserved fruits of various kinds that I have encountered since coming to Finland... although they mostly have the basic cake part itself in common too, just with the addition of different toppings.

[isilya]

Fascinating, I think I would break cakes down more into methods than flavours.

Fatless cakes: pavlova, Angel food cake, meringue cake, fatless sponge.

Creamed butter cakes, and their close relation, the all-in-one cakes: the biggest category by far and a lot of layer cakes and fruit cakes are just some variation of butter cake between the layers or fruit, eg pineapple upside down cake. Some more unusual flavours might be pandan, earl grey tea (or tea generally including matcha), maple, golden syrup, or tres leches.

Hot water cakes: boiled chocolate cake can become mocha/caramel/Dulce de leche, sticky date pudding/sticky toffee pudding.

Boiled/steamed cakes: dense ones like Christmas pudding & British cakes, and light fluffy ones like ethereal Japanese yuzu sponges.

Oil-based cakes: Moroccan and Mediterranean olive oil and pine nut cakes that can verge on the almost savoury with aromas of lemon zest and rosemary, Genoise sponges, carrot cake, gingerbread.

Non-wheat cakes: almond and orange cake, pistachio and lemon cake, all of the flourless chocolate cakes, mochi cake.

Roux (tang Mian) cakes: “Japanese” cotton chiffon style cakes

Yeasted cakes: beesting is one of my faves but any combination of yeast, honey, nuts and custard is ❤️❤️❤️

Unleavened cakes (no yeast no baking soda): some old fashioned sponges that rely solely on whisked air

Shortcakes: my lemon curd cake.

[cimorene]

I can see that your divisions come from a much broader knowledge of cakes as well as a more chef/food scientist level of comprehension of them!

I've had nut cakes, but I've never made one. I've heard of angel food cake, but I didn't know it was fatless, and it didn't even occur to me that a pavlova was a cake (a giant cookie? or something? idk).

Also I had never heard of hot water cakes until like, last week. I didn't know that Christmas pudding was boiled or steamed - but I thought it was pudding-textured; is it actually a cake instead?!

So basically oil cakes and butter cakes are the only ones I was thinking of when I made this post, although my worldview did include nut/flourless cakes and pavlovas.

But in the butter cake world, I definitely should try maple and and Earl Grey as well as matcha. Maybe tres leches too.

[isilya]

https://www.delicious.com.au/recipes/ottolenghi-walnut-cake-recipe/zf821xcr

[isilya]

https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/earl-grey-tea-cakes-lemon-pistachio-syrup/818687ca-e505-466d-8ba5-80c6e762b3a3

[isilya]

https://www.affordablewholefoods.com.au/blog/recipes/desserts-baking/maple-macadamia-cake/?print=pdf

[isilya]

I totally understand how the majority of cakes seem like vanilla/butter or chocolate cake if you’re thinking mostly of oil/butter cakes.

I definitely think of ur-cake as the plain “unflavoured” (so, usually butter lol) version then it can be taken in any direction with cocoa/chocolate, coffee, nuts, fruit, citrus & zest, yoghurt & sour cream, essences like vanilla/pandan/almond, alcohol, flavourings like mint/orange oil, spices, herbs, and now even ground freeze dried powders like raspberry. Then toppings/fillings/frostings.

[conuly]

But what other cakes are there, really? All the other options that come up when I browse recipe sites seem to be some slight variation on these - in fact, mostly just on chocolate or vanilla really - or a cheesecake, which is another category of thing.

Before vanilla took off as a flavoring, most cakes would've had rosewater or perhaps violetwater or orange blossom water taking that role. And you still see that come up pretty frequently in Middle Eastern recipes!

There's also things like tres leches and pineapple upside down cakes, though I suppose in both cases the "base" is a basic yellow or white cake.

We have also done red velvet cake, but it turns out without the food coloring this is just kinda vanilla spice cake.

Historic recipes don't use food coloring, but use cocoa* and vinegar or buttermilk to get the same "red" color - and sometimes, for a more dramatic presentation, beets! Velvet refers to the texture of the crumb, iirc.

* Old fashioned cocoa was not "dutch processed", not usually, so reacted differently from most modern cocoas.

[cimorene]

Yeah, I've learned about the history of red velvet cake on Wikipedia, but recipes with food coloring is pretty much the rule these days! I don't know where I'd've been able to get non-dutched cocoa anyway. Of course, the modern recipes still have cocoa, they just have way less than a chocolate cake would have.