Cakes & Custards

🇿🇼Zimbabwe

Chikenduza

A soft bun topped with a thick slab of pink or white sugar icing, sold from bakery counters and tuckshops everywhere.

🇷🇴Transylvania, Romania

Chimney Cake

Kürtőskalács

Chimney cake is sweet yeast dough wrapped around a spit, roasted over charcoal, with a caramelized crust and soft centre.

🇮🇱Israel

Chocolate Babka

בבקה

Yeasted loaf twisted around chocolate or cinnamon so that the filling shows in layers along the cut, baked in a tin.

🇷🇴Romania

Chocolate Layer Cake

Amandine

Squares of cocoa sponge soaked in rum syrup, layered with chocolate cream and covered in a hard chocolate fondant.

🇦🇹Austria

Chocolate Pudding Cake

Mohr im Hemd

Warm chocolate pudding cake, literally 'Moor in a shirt', served with chocolate sauce, moist chocolate texture, a beloved Austrian dessert, rich.

🇦🇷Argentina

Chocotorta

An Argentine no-bake cake of chocolate cookies (Chocolinas) layered with a mix of dulce de leche and cream cheese. A birthday-party icon invented in the 1980s, served cold.

🇨🇱Chile

Christmas Bread

Pan de Pascua

Chilean Christmas fruitcake with candied fruits, nuts, and spices, a festive holiday tradition, moist and rich.

🇬🇧England, United Kingdom

Christmas Cake

A dark fruit cake fed with brandy over weeks, then covered with marzipan and hard royal or fondant icing.

🇧🇩Sylhet Division, Bangladesh

Chunga Pitha

চুঙ্গা পিঠা

Sticky rice packed into a length of green bamboo and roasted slowly over a fire until the rice steams inside the tube.

🇨🇼Curaçao

Coconut Cake

Bol di Coco

Bol di coco; a traditional Curaçaoan coconut cake; a sweet delight of Krioyo cuisine; made with fresh coconut; a feature of celebrations and gatherings; a reflection of the island's tropical ingredients

🇱🇰Sri Lanka

Coconut Cake

බිබික්කන්

A dark, dense cake of scraped coconut, jaggery, semolina and candied fruit spiced with cardamom and clove, baked slowly and cut into squares.

🇺🇸United States

Coconut Cake

A white layer cake filled and frosted with coconut, often covered in shredded coconut.

🇸🇭Saint Helena

Coconut Fingers

Long finger-shaped Madeira sponge cakes dipped in pink or green icing and rolled in desiccated coconut; a traditional Saint Helena celebration cake for weddings, christenings, birthdays, and St Helena Day.

🇮🇹Italy

Colomba Pasquale

Dove-shaped Easter bread, the sweet counterpart to panettone, topped with pearl sugar and almonds. Soft, buttery, and lightly scented with candied orange.

🇬🇳Conakry, Guinea

Conakry Rolled Cake

Gâteau roulé Konakry

A rolled cake from Conakry made with cassava flour, wheat flour, eggs, sugar, and vanilla; traditional for special occasions; a unique Guinean dessert blending local cassava flour with French pastry technique.

🇧🇳Brunei

Cone-shaped Rice Cake

Selurut

Cone-shaped dessert made by mixing rice flour, sago, coconut milk, sugar, and salt, then pouring the mixture into young coconut leaves rolled into slim cones before steaming; a well-loved Bruneian kuih; the cone shape from the coconut leaf wrapper is distinctive; a popular snack at markets.

🇷🇪Reunion

Corn Cake

Gâteau Sosso

Traditional corn cake; a nutritious cake that is back in fashion; cooked a l'ancienne under embers; a Reunionese sweet; a TasteAtlas-listed must-try; the gâteau sosso that is a Reunionese tradition.

🇫🇷Corsica, France

Corsican Cheesecake

Fiadone

Corsican cheesecake made with brocciu, lemon zest, and no crust.

🇳🇮Nicaragua

Cosa de Horno

A Nicaraguan oven-baked corn cake, dense and slightly sweet, often served with cheese or sour cream.

🇺🇸United States

Country-Style Cheesecake

A dense, rustic cheesecake made with cream cheese or farmer's cheese, less sweet than the New York style.

🇭🇷Zagreb, Croatia

Cream Cake

Kremšnita

In Zagreb, Cream Cake is crisp pastry and vanilla-custard cake from Zagreb or Samobor.

🇸🇲San Marino

Crossbow Arrow Cake

Verretta

A chocolate-covered wafer cake with layers of crispy wafers and sweet cocoa cream, filled with hazelnuts and soft cocoa cream; the arrow embossed on top references the arrows used by crossbowmen in traditional Sammarinese tournaments; a specialty of La Serenissima bakery; served with moscato di San Marino; a TasteAtlas-listed dessert.

🇺🇸United States

Crumb Cake

A New York and New Jersey coffee-cake classic: a thick, buttery streusel over a soft yellow cake.

🇺🇸United States

Cupcake

A small, single-serving cake baked in a paper-lined tin and frosted — the American party dessert.

🇪🇪Estonia

Curd Cake

Kohupiimakook

Light traditional cake made with curd cheese, sour cream, eggs and sugar, often with raisins, popular at celebrations.

🇱🇹Lithuania

Curd Cheesecake

Varškės Tortas

Baked cheesecake made with Lithuanian curd cheese, often topped with fruit.

🇧🇾Belarus

Curd Layer Cake

Сырнікавы пірог

Baked cake of sweetened fresh curd between thin shortcrust layers, topped with sour cream and often with cranberries or poppy seed.

🇫🇷France

Dacquoise

Nut meringue layers with buttercream, delicate and crunchy.

🇩🇪Germany

Danube Wave Cake

Donauwelle

German sheet cake with cherry and buttercream layers, topped with chocolate glaze resembling waves of the Danube.

🇨🇦Canada

Date Squares

Matrimonial cake

Layered dessert with buttery oatmeal crumb layers sandwiching sweet date paste, known across Canada.

🇳🇴Norway

Delfiakake

Layered chocolate and vanilla fudge cake, a party favorite.

🇺🇸United States

Devil's Food Cake

A dark, intensely chocolate layer cake with a rich chocolate frosting.

🇮🇳Gujarat, India

Dhokla

ઢોકળા

A steamed, fermented rice and chickpea flour cake from Gujarat. It is light, fluffy, and served with green chutney.

🇺🇸United States

Dirt Cake

A playful dessert of crushed chocolate cookies layered with creamy pudding, topped with gummy worms.

🇺🇸United States

Doberge Cake

A New Orleans layer cake of thin cake layers and rich custard filling, glazed with poured chocolate or fondant.

🇭🇺Hungary

Dobos Cake

Dobostorte

Hungarian Dobos Torte is a layered sponge cake filled with chocolate buttercream and capped by a crisp caramel wedge; Austria knows it as Dobostorte.