With Easter Sunday around the corner, you may have already planned out your brunch menu. Or, if your big feast comes at the end of the day, maybe you’ve already plotted out your dinner plan. (We’ve got you covered with a slew of ham recipes, including this knockout from James Beard Award-winning Chicago-based chef Sarah Grueneberg.) And, if you’re like us, you've been celebrating the lead up to Easter by diving into all that great candy. Don’t let all that sugar lead you astray, however. There’s still room for dessert. There are a lot of ways you could go with Easter dessert, but this year, we advise one, show-stopping centerpiece. So, we’ve rounded up 11 beautiful cakes that are perfect for the occasion. They’re bright, colorful, reminiscent of spring and appropriate to eat at any hour of the day.
Classic Carrot Cake with Fluffy Cream Cheese Frosting
Carrot cake, that 1970s favorite, has a new audience at luxe restaurants like Manhattan's Le Bernardin. At the Urban Farmer in Portland, Oregon, pastry chef Jodi Elliot prepares the ultimate version: moist and not too sweet.
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Cornmeal-Almond Cake with Strawberries and Mascarpone
This buttery cornmeal cake contains more than a half-pound of toasted almonds, giving it an excellent, nutty flavor. Instead of using plain whipped cream as a topping, Chef Mike Lata whips a combination of cream and mascarpone for a bit of tanginess.
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Six-Layer Coconut Cake with Passion Fruit Filling
This towering dessert is made up of layers of super-moist, almost puddinglike coconut cake spread with tangy passion fruit curd, then topped with whipped cream and crispy flakes of toasted coconut. The recipe is from Cynthia Wong, pastry chef in Decatur, Georgia. The cake may look intimidating, but it's easy to make: "Just pop the layers out of the baking pans and slap them together," Wong says.
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Lemon-Glazed Citrus-Yogurt Pound Cake
Grapefruit juice in the pound cake and lemon juice in the glaze give this sweet, tender cake an especially citrusy taste. Be sure to use cake flour rather than self-rising to ensure a feather-light texture.
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Honey Cake with Citrus Frosting
This tender, light honey cake, laced with hints of coffee and orange juice, is perfect with a cup of tea.
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Tres Leches Cake with Strawberries
Many versions of this dessert, made by soaking sponge cake in condensed milk, evaporated milk and cream, are too sweet and wet. This one from chef Soledad Correa of Casa Silva is perfect, with just a hint of cinnamon.
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Bibi’s Coconut Cake
Julie Tanous, the food blogger who works with actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson, uses coconut in every part of this festive dessert, from cake to filling to frosting. Bibi was her grandmother, and she inspired this tasty and deeply Southern recipe.
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Olive Oil Cake with Honey-Yogurt Cream and Strawberries
This is no featherweight spring cake: Olive oil and almond flour keep it dense and moist so it can hold plenty of juicy macerated strawberries. An infusion of lime in the cake batter and a tangy yogurt whipped cream brightens each slice.
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Angel Food Cake with Three-Berry Compote
Angel food cake is virtually fat-free—it's made with egg whites but no yolks—yet becomes more decadent as it soaks up the sweet juices from a farm-stand-berry compote. Hugo Matheson and Kimbal Musk add, "Don't forget that egg shells are great in compost."
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Strawberry-and-Wild-Fennel Compote with Pound Cake
Pastry chef Bill Corbett of Absinthe Brasserie in San Francisco harvests his own fennel pollen for this dessert by hanging wild fennel flowers upside down; as they dry, the pollen falls into a container below.
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Triple-Cheese Cheesecake with Amaretti Crust
This killer cheesecake has an ethereally light, creamy texture and fantastic crunchy crust made from honey graham crackers and amaretti cookies.
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