Top 20 Best Classic and Famous Cakes and Pastries

"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.

Cake & Pastry News, Reviews & Resources

• 10 deliciously selfish cupcake recipes - "A lavish sugar hit that you don’t have to share? No wonder cupcakes are having a moment. These easy bakes will see you through from breakfast to dessert."
• 50 of the world's best desserts - CNN travel.
• A Chocolate Camp for Pastry Chefs - "In a Las Vegas strip mall, a master chocolatier is teaching cooks from all over the world how to create the perfect bonbon."
• A Cupcake Confident in Its Own Skin - The New York Times.
• A New School of Pastry Chefs Got Its Start in Architecture - The New York Times.
• AMUSE-BOUCHE - single, bite-sized hors d’œuvre.
• Cake - Wikipedia.
• Cakewalk3D lets your regular 3D printer decorate food - "The Kickstarter project lets you do fancy chef creations at home."
• Chef Spotlight: Jessica PrÉalpato - "At only 33 years old, the pastry chef of Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée is a force to be reckoned with."
• Coronavirus-Inspired Dessert Is Going ‘Viral’ In Prague - "This week, as new state of emergency gets under way in the Czech Republic to combat the spread of Covid-19, Prague residents are lining up to get a taste of a “virus cake” that has become the talk of the town."
• Danish pastry - Wikipedia.
• Doughnut - Wikipedia.
• From Bourbons to Digestives: how biscuits got their names - BBC.
• How long until I find out my wife is a cake? The viral videos dividing the internet - "The sight of knives slicing into cakes that resemble everything from fruit to toilet roll has driven some people to existential crises."
• How to make the perfect Sachertorte - recipe - "Soft but firm, delicately chocolatey, luscious with apricot jam - a ‘grown-up chocolate cake’ that gets better with age."
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• 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.
• Kringle - Wikipedia.
• Let them eat cake: New Zealand couple document luxury life in Covid-19 quarantine - "The pair’s blog about their enforced stay at an Auckland hotel, featuring high-class food and a mini-fridge full of treats, has caused envy worldwide."
• List of cakes - Wikipedia.
• List of pastries - Wikipedia.
• Meet The World's Best Pastry Chef: Jessica PrÉalpato - YouTube.
• Mooncakes galore for Mid-Autumn festival - "Chinese & Vietnamese people around the globe are celebrating the Mid-Autumn festival."
• Paris’s Best Macarons: A Guide - The New York Times.
• Pastry - Wikipedia.
• Sachertorte - Wikipedia.
• The destination for cake lovers - "Budapest's best cakes and where to find them."
• The erotic origins of Italy's most famous sweet - "Italy has a number of age-old pastries that resemble genitalia, like cannoli. But while they may induce a few giggles nowadays, their origins are linked to serious traditions."
• The gooey 'biscake' eaten by millions - "Alfajores are synonymous with Argentina - the biggest producer and consumer - where they are as central to the national culinary identity as steak and Malbec."
• The surprising truth about pavlova - "Australians and New Zealanders have long argued over who invented the pavlova, but the authors of a new book have found the dessert’s origins go back much further."
• This woman's creepily realistic cakes will freak you out - The Telegraph.
• Torte - Wikipedia.
• Twinkie - American snack cake, described as "golden sponge cake with a creamy filling".
• WATER CAKE: A DAIRY-FREE, EGG-FREE, MAGIC CAKE - "This magic cake that doesn’t use any milk, eggs or butter is perfect for self-isolation."
• What Cookies & Meth Have in Common - The New York Times.
• What is desseralitÉ & how it made Jessica PrÉalpato The World’s Best Pastry Chef 2019 - 50 Best Stories.
• Zuccotto - semi-frozen, chilled dessert made with alchermes, cake and ice cream.

Cakes & Pastries

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• 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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• 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.
• Experts rank the 15 best Dunkin' Donuts flavors - Thrillist.
• In Paris Bakeries, LibertÉ From Gluten - The New York Times.
• Is the World’s Best Croissant Made in Australia? - The New York Times.
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• 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).
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• 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.
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• Original Sacher-Torte - since 1832. "The world-famous original in the attractive wooden box - a sweet greeting from Vienna."
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• 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.
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• Pastel de nata - is a Portuguese egg tart pastry, common in Portugal.
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• 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 5, 2020: over 1,000 results.
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• 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 - The Telegraph.
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• 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.
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• 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.
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• Sachertorte - since 1786. Demel, K. u. K. Hofzuckerbäcker. Vienna, Austria. Online store.
• Salad cakes are the latest weird food craze in Japan - The Telegraph.
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• 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.
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• 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.