My inbox sees more questions about building beautiful cakes than nearly any other subject (okay, maybe it’s tied with pie dough queries of all sorts). Layer cakes are daunting: They’ve got that whole ...

A great chocolate cake goes like this: Start with a layer of devil’s food cake, nearly obsidian dark from Valrhona cocoa powder. Then add a thick strata of buttercream, another of chocolate crémeux, ...

Even the most fastidious pastry chef (I may or may not have two pairs of culinary tweezers, X-Acto knives, and a protractor in my kitchen drawer) can acknowledge the charm of an imperfect-looking ...

White as a Sunday glove, coconut is the doyenne of Southern layer cakes, a masterpiece of home cookery that has crowned dining room sideboards for more than a hundred years. This towering four-layer ...

If you’ve never tackled a layer cake, the whole process can be a bit intimidating ... and it can become a bit of a mess if you don’t know what you’re doing. But assembling and frosting a layer cake is ...