My wife loves German chocolate.
For me the frosting has to be chocolate buttercream- and lots of it. (on some cakes sour cream or cream cheese is fine, like a carrot cake). My local bakery up in San Jose made an excellent chocolate buttercream angel food cake. But my fave is yellow cake.
I also despise that whipped up “frosting”- it is too sweet and it is nasty.
Best: Mary’s chocolate cake with fudge frosting.
It’s a family recipe. I’m sure it came from one of my grandmother’s cook books, but her maid made it for every grandchild, and my husband and i still make it.
The cake has bakers chocolate and sour cream and while it has some baking powder, a lot of the rise is from 3 beaten egg whites.
The frosting hardens fudge on the cake. So the whole cake is enrobed in fudge. As kids, we fought over scraps of the frosting.
Least favorite would be supermarket cake with lots of crisco frosting. Or with “whipped cream” frosting that tastes like plastic.
Best: devil’s food with chocolate fudge buttercream icing (and vanilla ice cream, if that’s allowed). Spice cake with maple frosting would be lovely, too, since it’s much scarcer.
Worst: it’s hard to think of one, because it’s all cake, right? But I suppose Funfetti, whatever the hell that’s supposed to be, with white icing. I’d still eat it, of course. Because it’s still cake.
I’m easy; I like almost any kind of cake. Caramel or cream-cheese frosting preferred. I guess I would be least-happy about anything with artificial fruit flavoring, but I’d still eat it.
Best: A moist carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.
Worst: A flourless chocolate cake…it’s like a disappointing brownie.
Black Forest Cake. Chocolate layer cake, with buttercream frosting and cherries in between the layers.
Sometimes, you have to swing at the softball and aim for the fences.
And Potty Humor never hurts.
Best? A homemade rhubarb pie.
But, no complaints if someone decided to give me a chocolate/chocolate cake, or a lemon cheesecake, or a pineapple upside-down cake.
Worst? German chocolate cake. Hate that shredded coconut.
Best: No party at all.
Worst: Returning to the table to find an empty urn with my name on it.
Add me to the list of people who don’t care for cake in its conventional forms. The cake part is dry and boring and the frosting is too sweet. Sometimes the cake designer will stick in a layer of jam to try to compensate for how much cake sucks, but to me this is like pouring maple syrup over beach sand.
But if the rules change so we can start talking about other alternatives — brownies, blueberry muffins, a proper tarte tatin — then we’re in business.
I edited the title to make it clear it’s about cake, and moved the thread to cafe society.
Back in the 90s, I used to bake cakes for all my friends’ birthdays. One friend asked for a German chocolate cake. I went to the library and looked through the index of literally every cookbook that could possibly have a cake recipe, in vain. German chocolate cake was nowhere to be found.
It was much later that I learned that German chocolate cake has nothing to do with Germany. Instead, it is named after German’s Chocolate, itself named for the company founder, Samuel German.
No worries! The only reason I remembered it is because of that hunt for a recipe.
As for the OP:
-My favorite cake is carrot cake, the kind my family makes, not too sweet and full of raisins and nuts spices, and with cream cheese frosting. It’s so rich and delicious, and although I normally am not a big cake fan, I love it.
-Worst? Angel food cake. There are plenty of cakes that are mediocre, and cheap grocery store white cake is a very close follow-up; but Angel Food Cake is the least foodlike food I know of. If I have a bite, it’s only to remind myself what it’d feel like to eat a foam mattress.
Tough call …
I’d be thrilled with cassata cake, German chocolate, coconut cake, tres leches …
I’d not be thrilled with angel food or pineapple upside cake. Too many rubbery angel food cakes in my past, and I detest pineapple.
I love cheesecake but do not consider it a true cake at all.
Best: Spice cake with cream cheese icing. (That’s what we had for our wedding cake.) A Black Forest torte or carrot cake would also do.
Worst: Angel food. Ick.
That’s what I said! But there’s an less foodlike food: those puffed rice biscuit thingies. I swear they’re stamped out of styrofoam.
I find rice cakes strangely comforting. Haven’t eaten them in years, but they’re not like anything else, certainly not like cake, so I’ll happily eat one if offered.
Yup, that’s the one.
Worst: Angel food or any really airy “cake” with no density to it.
Best: spice cake with penuche frosting
Worst: lemon cake.