At New York’s Milk Bar, Christina Tosi makes this towering cake every spring, when sweet and tiny tristar strawberries are in season. This is by no means an everyday cake, but it’s worth the work that you’ll put in, and worthy of a special occasion. Get the recipe for Strawberry Lemon Cake »

Classic Smith Island Cake

This hummingbird cake honors the legacy of the Southern cook Edna Lewis. The luscious, fruit-and-nut-studded layer cake is served in Atlanta’s Watershed restaurant; the recipe first appeared in Christiane Lauterbach’s feature about the restaurant, which ran in our April 2009 issue. Get the recipe for Hummingbird Cake »

This classic, German, cherry-filled chocolate cake, a masterpiece of cherry brandy-soaked pastry engineering, improves the longer it sits. Get the recipe for Black Forest Cake (Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte)

Three velvety layers sandwiched with thick dark chocolate icing make a decadent, crowd-pleasing dessert. Get the recipe for Very Moist Chocolate Layer Cake »

This buttery cake slathered with rich caramel icing has earned local fame on Chicago’s South Side—it’s one of our favorites to make for special occasions.

This rich, multilayered dessert of angel food and devil’s food cake, peanut butter mousse, and milk chocolate ganache should be frozen before icing is added and refrigerated before it’s sliced. Get the recipe for Heaven and Hell Cake »

Pecan Cream Cake

A classic white cake recipe with a foolproof frosting. Get the recipe for White Mountain Layer Cake with Marshmallow Buttercream

A traditional Southern confection, this regal dessert gained popularity through writer Owen Wister’s 1906 romance novel, Lady Baltimore. Three dreamy white layers of cake are infused with rose water and slathered with an Italian meringue frosting studded with pecans, raisins, dried figs, and candied orange peel.

This recipe is based on one in Emma Rylander Lane’s Some Good Things to Eat (self-published, 1898). Get the recipe for Lane Cake »