The traditional French Christmas log exists in many variations of flavor and presentation. I like this one because the chocolate cake and coffee buttercream are not an excessively sweet combination. Also, the marzipan decorations can be prepared well in advance.

The sweet, mellow flavor of Bourbon has a great affinity for chocolate and pecans.  Serve this unadorned cake with a little unsweetened whipped cream or top with the easy chocolate frosting below.

A gateau Breton is a wonderful French cake, very much like a very dense pound cake, and is a specialty of Brittany. This non-traditional version of it adds a layer of a cooked apple filling between layers of the dough.

The is the easiest and best-tasting sponge layer you can imagine, and since it’s baked in two pans, you won’t need to slice through it to make a layer cake. Thanks to my friend Kyra Effren, one of the world’s great bakers, for sharing this recipe.

Gingerbread’s long history pretty much concludes in the British Isles, where it is a standard. This is an adaptation of a 1940s British recipe.

These snow-white little cakes are as delicious as any coconut candy I’ve ever tasted. It’s not necessary to clarify the butter for these. Unsweetened coconut is available both as long shreds (like the sweetened coconut you can buy in the supermarket) or more finely ground. The shreds retain more moisture than the ground coconut does. Either may be used in this recipe, but if you use the shredded variety, pulse it in the food processor half a dozen times, not to grind it to a powder, but to reduce the shreds in size to about 1/8 inch.

No cake is homier or more casual than a carrot cake, especially a carrot cake with a filling or topping of cream cheese frosting. This is loosely adapted from a recipe by Maida Heatter in her landmark Book of Great American Desserts.

I love this type of cake and blueberries are the perfect fruit for it—they melt to a jamlike consistency between the cake batter and crumb topping while the cake is baking.

Slightly reminiscent of a French gâteau breton, this dense cake is perfect with a glass of sweet wine or a cup of tea. As a dessert, it would need to be dressed up with some fruit or berries.

In the fall of 1986, I was teaching my first career-training intensive baking course at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking school when I learned that Peter’s birthday was a few days away. I asked Gaynor Grant, our registrar, what kind of a cake I should make for Peter, and she told me that he absolutely adored the raspberry meringue cake from Maurice Bonté’s bakery, then the best pastry shop in Manhattan.

Marble cakes are both homey and festive. A marble cake looks slick when you slice into it and reveal the delicate pattern of the two batters swirled together.

For this type of chocolate mousse cake, baked cake layers are filled with chocolate mousse.

The traditional French Christmas log exists in many variations of flavor and presentation. I like this one because the chocolate cake and coffee buttercream are not an excessively sweet combination. Also, the marzipan decorations can be prepared well in advance.

Gingerbread’s long history pretty much concludes in the British Isles, where it is a standard. This is an adaptation of a 1940s British recipe.

Vienna is the undisputed world capital of cake. There are layer cakes, mousse cakes, historical cakes (the Sachertorte of the Hotel Sacher has been a closely guarded secret recipe for over 200 years), and even plain cakes. I recently asked my friend Erika Lieben for her favorite. She wrote back a four-word response: Gehruerter Gugelhupf mit Rosinen (“beaten” coffee cake with raisins).

No cake is homier or more casual than a carrot cake, especially a carrot cake with a filling or topping of cream cheese frosting. This is loosely adapted from a recipe by Maida Heatter in her landmark Book of Great American Desserts.

I love this type of cake and blueberries are the perfect fruit for it—they melt to a jamlike consistency between the cake batter and crumb topping while the cake is baking.

Slightly reminiscent of a French gâteau breton, this dense cake is perfect with a glass of sweet wine or a cup of tea. As a dessert, it would need to be dressed up with some fruit or berries.

This is an ideal hot-weather cake because it contains neither whipped cream nor buttercream. Also the fruit filing and the meringue covering are light.

Typical of the Viennese love of the absurd, this rich chocolate almond cake is baked in a ridged, semi-cylindrical pan. After the chocolate icing is poured over the unmolded cake, it is stuck with pieces of slivered almond. Thus, it resembles a tied, larded, and sauced roast. For any of you who might not have the mold, this is equally delicious baked in a 10-inch round pan and served as an unwhimsical cake.

An adaptation of the truffle cake from the famous Sprungli cake shop in Zurich. This dessert is easy to make in advance and, as it makes two cakes, one may be used immediately and the other refrigerated or frozen for later use.

This popular Austrian cake (prepared in Alsace as well as Germany) probably migrated to France with Stanislaw Leszczynski, the exiled king of Poland who set up court in Nancy, capital of the Lorraine. The king was a legendary baker and he is credited variously with having introduced the baba and the savarin to France. Perhaps his interest in bread was passed on to his daughter Maria, who married Louis XV and became queen of France.