Kate Krader (@kkrader on Twitter) is Food & Wine's restaurant editor. When she tells us where to find our culinary heart's desire, we listen up.
Not that anyone has anything against flowers, but there are a lot of them out there on Mother’s Day. In fact, About Flowers, an online flower resource created by the Society of American Florists, reports that 38 percent of U.S. adults bought flowers or plants for their mothers on the big day.
Which is why it seems like a good thing to mix it up this year. So many terrific cakes need a good home this Mother’s Day. Here are some excellent options for a wide assortment of moms.
For Hipster Moms: Baked (Brooklyn, New York)
This awesome bakery is located in a neighborhood hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. Baked’s best-selling cakes include groovy options like Coca-Cola Bundt cake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles; the Sweet & Salty, a dark chocolate cake filled with salted caramel, frosted with caramel chocolate ganache and topped with fleur de sel; and Aunt Sassy’s pistachio cake, with pistachio white cake and vanilla-honey buttercream. Because owners Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito are so smart, they offer most of their cake flavors as cupcakes, too.
For Generous Moms: Layer Cake Bakery (Irvine, California)
The Layer Cake team thinks big: Their half-sheet cake can serve 64 of your mom’s best friends. Among the 23 choices are peanut butter chocolate cake with chocolate mousse, peanut butter chocolate ganache and chocolate buttercream; Matcha-Misu cake, a yellow cake layered with green tea custard; and Passion Fruit Delight cake, which uses yellow cake as a vehicle for passion fruit glaze and Belgian white chocolate. If your mantra this year is “Less is More,” you can buy just one slice of most of the layer cakes as well.
For Picky Moms: Dahlia Bakery (Seattle, Washington)
The layer cakes at chef Tom Douglas’s iconic bakery are made to order with 48-hours notice, and you can customize it to your heart's content: First you pick the size - from four inches (for four to six people) up to a half sheet (for 50 people). Then the all-important flavor choice: Chocolate fudge, carrot cake, buttermilk and more. Next, the filling: You can select straightforward with white or dark chocolate mousse, or be more creative with brown butter cream cheese or caramelized bananas. And finally, the buttercream: Hazelnut, espresso, orange, milk chocolate… If your mom is fancy, you can add a ganache glaze finish or candy flowers for an additional $15.
For Hoarder Moms: Caroline’s Cakes (St. Louis, Missouri)
The most popular cake at Caroline’s is the seven-layer caramel cake: It boasts seven big, fat layers of yellow cake filled and slathered with caramel icing. It’s a lot of cake, so keep in mind that it can be frozen and refrozen for up to six months. The Sinfully Chocolate cake has only four layers of chocolate cake, filled with chocolate ganache and covered in Caroline’s Southern fudge icing; likewise the Double Black Diamond cake is an insane combination of four layers of chocolate cake, coconut filling and Southern fudge icing.
For Dietary-Restricted Moms: Swoon (Ridgefield, Connecticut)
This gluten-free, nut-free bakery offers 11 kinds of layer cakes, including Mochaccino (chocolate cake with coffee buttercream) and dairy-free chocolate (no-dairy chocolate cake with frosting choices like vanilla, chocolate, espresso or chocolate raspberry). Swoon also sells a cake that features everyone’s favorite ice cream flavor, mint chocolate chip (chocolate layers with vanilla-mint buttercream and mini chocolate chips).
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