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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...