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Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
6 Min
04/03/2026
Sponge cakes lined with cream and topped with frosting and decorative touches — that’s the typical cake or pastry (cake slice). While that is cake for many, there is more to cakes than just cream-based ones. From layered ‘king of cakes’ with a whopping 25 layers, to the iconic and jiggly castella sponge cake made on wooden boards from Japan, cakes around the world are diverse enough to fit different tastes and interests.
As ordinary as cakes have become recently, being a part of celebrations and special occasions, they remain unique, for cakes go far beyond the typical hyped chocolate cakes and cheesecakes. Around the world, cakes take dramatically different forms from the German Black Forest cake, layered with chocolate sponge, cream and cherries, to Austria’s dense Sachertorte sealed with apricot jam and Latin America’s milk-soaked tres leches. Each cake is a reflection of its local ingredients, chequered history, climate, and baking techniques.
Portuguese traders and missionaries who arrived in Nagasaki during the 16th century introduced the Japanese to cakes baked with wheat flour, eggs, and milk. The Portuguese cake was called Pão de Castela, meaning ‘bread from Castile’, a region in Spain. The Japanese softened this to ‘kasutera’. Castella is usually baked in a wooden frame, which produces a browned top and a crispy bottom, which comes from finely-ground brown sugar crystals that sink to the bottom of the batter. The cake uses no rising agent and gets its airiness through the use of bread, flour and whipped eggs.
Named after the great Russian prima ballerina, Anna Pavlova, this dessert is absolutely ethereal and comes from New Zealand, with disputed claims coming from Australia. New Zealand was the first of the two nations to come up with the pavlova name in 1929, but Australia was the first to come up with the recipe that is now known as the modern-day pavlova in 1935. It is said that a pavlova is not a true pavlova unless it has a soft layer in the middle produced by the addition of vinegar, corn flour, or both to the egg whites and sugar that would otherwise create a crisp meringue.
The ‘pound’ in pound cake refers directly to the quantity of each ingredient. This buttery cake is believed to have originated in Northern Europe in the early 1700s, consisting of a pound of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs, with no leavening, liquid, or extract in the original recipe. Pound cake has more fat than regular cake, thanks to its generous use of butter as compared to regular cake. It is baked in loaf tins or a bundt pan, if tradition is to be followed. As pound cake made its way throughout the world, it got several makeovers, with baking powder added for a fluffier cake.
The origin of Black Forest gateau (cake), or as the Germans call it, the Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, is disputed. But it is said to have been invented in the 1930s somewhere in Germany, and probably named after the iconic Black Forest in Germany. What makes the cake special is the use of cherry brandy (kirsch or kirschwasser), which comes from the aforementioned area of Germany. Kirsch is a local liquor made from preserved local sour cherries. Pastry chefs soak the chocolate sponge layers with Kirsch and add layers of whipped cream with plenty of cherries and chocolate shavings.
In 1832, the Austrian State Chancellor Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich tasked his kitchen staff with making an extraordinary dessert to impress special guests. The chef was ill that particular day, and the duty fell on the 16-year-old apprentice chef, Franz Sacher. The teenager came up with the most delicious chocolate cake, using butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate, flour, and apricot jam. Such was its popularity that in the 20th century, Hotel Sacher and Demel pastry shop battled over the cake's ownership, trademark, and whether the original cake had one or two layers of sponge. The case ended in 1963 with the court siding with Hotel Sacher on the ownership and Demel on the number of layers.
No one cheesecake is universal; there are many types of this creamy dessert, and the most popular ones in India are perhaps the Spanish burnt Basque cheesecake and American New York-style cheesecake. American cream cheese was developed in 1872 when William Lawrence from Chester, New York, was searching for a way to recreate the soft French cheese Neufchâtel and discovered a way of making an ‘unripened cheese’ that is heavier and creamier. This goes into the American cheesecake with a solid cookie or cracker crust.
The Spanish burnt Basque cheesecake, on the other hand, is made with five ingredients and comes from La Viña in San Sebastián, Spain contains nothing more than cream cheese, eggs, cream, sugar and a bit of flour. In 1990, Chef Santiago Rivera embarked on an experiment to make a new type of cake every day, and unlike classic New York cheesecake, which is smooth and dense, Basque cheesecake is light and scorched and caramelised on top with a rich, gooey interior, baked at high heat.
‘Tres leches’ collectively means ‘three milks’ – condensed milk, whole milk and evaporated milk – which are used to ‘bathe’ and make the milky cake from South America. This is a sponge cake that is dense with unknown origins, but most point towards Nicaragua. This holds weight because by 1896, the U.S. Department of Commerce was exporting condensed milk to Nicaragua, and in 1936 president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a trade agreement with Nicaragua, which reduced Nicaraguan duties in favour of importing dairy products from Wisconsin. Someone got creative, possibly inspired by other Nicaraguan desserts and made this super moist cake.
Perhaps the most interesting cake on this list, Baumkuchen is a ‘spit cake’, meaning it was made on a rotating spit over an open fire or a special oven, for special occasions. Back in the day, the dough used to be wrapped around a stick; this was before the 17th century.
But after that, cake dough or rather batter, was put on the rotating spit, layer by layer and baked. It takes a great deal of patience to make it with bakers concentrating for 1.5 hours on every single stick and layer to control the baking process so the cake is not too dry or too moist. Skilled pastry chefs have been known to create cakes with 25 layers and weighing over 100 pounds.
Cakes may seem comfortingly familiar with candles, frosting, and a reason to gather, but beyond the usual flavours and ingredients lies a much wider world. Some countries make it creamy and dense, like Spain and the American cheesecakes, then some like it with boozy cherries or in intricate layers, like Germany. Across continents, cakes shift in texture, sweetness, and structure, shaped by what is loved and available locally and centuries of cross cultural exhchange.
