What cakes seem to have gone out of favor?

I haven’t seen a soaked cake of any flavor, except a Tiramisu, in ages. My grandmother was really into rum-soaked cakes. I was too young to partake until she was in too poor health to bake.

@Seek I haven’t seen a rum cake in years. The only “soaked” cake I can think of, besides tiramisu, that I see often, is tres leches. Does that count?

No se, pero I’ve never had it.

It’s called tres leches (3 milks) because once you bake the cake you pour condensed, evaporated, and whole milk, over it. Here is a recipe. I don’t like it very much. Not my sort of cake. It’s very popular in Latin America and Southeast FL (which is basically part of Latin America).

Sounds almost sickly sweet. Might be good to try after a spicy dinner.

It would definitely count as a soaked cake.

I don’t like the soaked part. I like dry foods in general. I don’t like cheesecake. I also tend to not like cakes with some sort of pudding, or mousse like, center. I don’t like croutons in my French onion soup, or open sandwiches with gravy. See the pattern?

I have a hard time finding one of my all-time favorites: coconut cake.

I also miss Spice cakes, which I haven’t eaten or baked in 20 years.

@marinelife I see coconut cake quite a bit in the South. I agree I don’t see coconut cake much outside of the South, and I don’t think I’ve ever eaten one made from scratch by a friend or family.

In Florida a deli chain has a Mounds cake (like the candy bar) with chocolate cake and coconut, which is my favorite cake of all time, but everywhere else I see it, it’s a white cake.

Do you have a recipe for it?

I have a tres leches cake mix in the kitchen that I bought at Aldi a couple of weeks ago.

Coconut cake is still popular at baked sales in the Midwest, @marinelife, but there was a boughten, layered one I used to really like that is not longer around. I know you can still buy spiced cake mixes, because I used on a few weeks back for a recipe.

Today I made a childhood favorite that I’ve not had in decades. It’s not a scratch cake, but a yellow mix beat with a can of fruit cocktail, eggs and oil. Sprinkle with brown sugar and nuts and bake. The topping is similar to German Chocolate topping…evap milk, butter and sugar boiled with coconut stirred in.

I woman just gave me her recipe for raw apple cake that is so moist if’s almost pudding.

I love a good oatmeal cake, and rarely get it. Never seen a mix or bakery version.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an oatmeal cake.

YUM!
Oatmeal cake with broiled topping.

Ugly Duckling Cake I made today.

^^That oatmeal cake looks delicious.

Red Velvet cake is so popular. I think it’s pretty gross.

Gross is right.

I don’t see Bundt cakes or upside-down cakes very often… but of course, I never liked either of these, so perhaps I am simply choosing my acquaintances according to cake preference. ;) I guess this follows @Seek‘s observation about soaked cakes to some extent.

I used to make a lot of cheesecakes in the 80s, but I haven’t even thought about doing so in years. They still appear on restaurant menus, though.

This probably doesn’t count, but jell-o molds, definitely. I know some used to be layered with cake.

@dappled_leaves I make a great pound cake bundt. The local supermarket here has several flavors of bundt cakes.

Upside down pineapple cake I rarely see. When I was younger it was quite popular.

@Seek Blech. I’ve never heard of that.

My grandmother made a firm yellow layer cake – not a lemon cake, much as I do like them – that had a brittle-ish but not hard-shell thin layer of frosting made out of semi-sweet chocolate. It was one of my favorite cakes in the world, ever. No one else seems to make it or even know what I’m talking about.

@CWOTUS The Mounds cake I mentioned above has a hardish shell of chocolate. It has two types of chocolate frosting, a fluffy lighter chocolate, and then the darker shell. I wonder if it’s similar to the frosting you describe?

Years ago Betty Crocker made a butter brickle cake and frosting. My favorite for a long time. I haven’t seen this in years now.

Over here in lil ol englandtown we have cakes that are, well…not cakes.
Jaffa Cake – The chocolate covered biscuit with a tangy orange bit in the middle.
Pontefract Cake – The liquorice based sweetie/candy.

My favourite version of the Black Forest Cake. Which is a shame, too, because it has such a great recipe.

1 package chocolate cake mix
1 can prepared coconut–pecan frosting
¾ cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
¾ cup butter or margarine
1⅔ cup granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour

Don’t forget garnishes such as:

Fish-shaped crackers
Fish-shaped candies
Fish-shaped solid waste
Fish-shaped dirt
Fish-shaped ethylbenzene
Pull-and-peel licorice
Fish-shaped volatile organic compounds and sediment-shaped sediment
Candy-coated peanut butter pieces (shaped like fish)
1 cup lemon juice
Alpha resins
Unsaturated polyester resin
Fiberglass surface resins and volatile malted milk impoundments
9 large egg yolks
12 medium geosynthetic membranes
1 cup granulated sugar
An entry called: “How to Kill Someone with Your Bare Hands”
2 cups rhubarb, sliced
⅔ cups granulated rhubarb
1 tbsp. all-purpose rhubarb
1 tsp. grated orange rhubarb
3 tbsp. rhubarb, on fire
1 large rhubarb
1 cross borehole electromagnetic imaging rhubarb
2 tbsp. rhubarb juice
Adjustable aluminium head positioner
Slaughter electric needle injector
Cordless electric needle injector
Injector needle driver
Injector needle gun
Cranial caps
1 tsp. vanilla extract
⅔ cup cocoa powder
1¼ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
¼ tsp. baking powder
1 to 2 cans vanilla frosting
A 20-foot thick impermeable clay layer
And it contains proven preservatives, deep-penetration agents, and gas- and odor-control chemicals that will deodorise and preserve putrid tissue.

St. Honoré Cake.
Too bad, because it was one of my favorites.

@ragingloli – I started out all confused, with you using imperial measurements.

Thanks for not letting me down.

Another soaked type of cake that I never see is Zuppa Inglese. The only times I see it are at my Italian family celebrations, and not as much as when I was a kid. Also, do people not put ladyfingers on them anymore? None of the pictures online had them.

They look time consuming to make.

I agree that Red Velvet Cake is gross, @jca, @JLeslie. Yet it’s so popular right now that they’re coming out with all different colors. Maybe mass quantities of non-red food color won’t taste as nasty.

The ones we have only have one layer of the chocolate, and one layer of the cream and the peaches. There’s much more of the sponge cake. Still time consuming I guess, about as time consuming as Tiramisu I’d guess.

Red velvet cake doesn’t taste much different than regular white cake to me. Maybe I just haven’t had a good quality one. I think the deep red color is what attracts most people. It definitely got me.

Sponge cakes – other than angle food – which will never go out due to my love of strawberry short cake with tons of whipped cream : )

Devil’s food cake. I don’t know what distinguished this from any other chocolate cake recipe, but I haven’t seen or heard of it in decades.

Lady Baltimore cake

Pineapple upside-down cake

Fruitcake. This one got a bad rep as the worst Christmas gift ever, and it became the subject of jokes. I remember, though, when fruitcake was popular; it was often the first choice for wedding cakes.

Applesauce cake

Gingerbread. Not a bread at all, but a sheet cake. I can’t remember the last time anyone offered me gingerbread, or when I last saw it on a dessert menu.

Bundt cake. This was a huge trend, maybe during the 1970s. Now, I’m guessing that the special pans are collecting dust in many kitchens and thrift shops.

Cupcakes. Didn’t we all get tired of that recent fad and the ubiquitous cupcake shops? I went to parties and weddings that didn’t have actual cakes, just cupcakes arranged on multi-tiered trays. Now, those niche bakeries are going out of business.

I still love a bundt cake. Vanilla with chocolate frosting.

Great scene in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” when the boyfriend’s waspy parents bring a bundt cake to the Greek family dinner.

“A būndt? What’s a būndt?!”

@ragingloli Sounds delicious. I add a half teaspoonful of radioactive nuclear sludge so the cake glows in the dark. Kids love it.

@Love_my_doggie I never was very fond of the cupcake fad, mostly because I like a proper plate and fork to eat cake. Plus, the cupcakes trended towards having a ridiculous amount of icing, which only made them more difficult to eat! However, some of the art don’t with cupcakes is quite impressive. Like the DC cupcake girls make some interesting displays.

Jello poke cake.

Most of the cakes mentioned above I have seen around in one form or another. My wife makes pineapple upside down cake, because I like it. Coconut cake is not hard to find.

I miss angel food cake. My grandmother made it from scratch. Yum.

I see angel food in supermarkets every day. They sell it in minis and regular cake size for strawberry shortcake and whatever else people do with them. I assume they are a no cholesterol option for a lot of people too.

Cupcakes are still popular for kids’ parties. I went to two parties last weekend (kids) and both had cupcakes instead of cake. What I dislike about cupcakes is that you need to use your fingers to get the paper off, and then your fingers are sticky. I’m very anti-sticky.

I bought some gingerbread (cake not cookies) from a supermarket in CT today.

We often made cupcakes for kids parties when I was little. One thing nice is if you have 2 or 3 flavor choices.

@JLeslie This one is pretty good and fairly easy.

@marinelife I love that it uses almond extract in the recipe. Yum. I’ll have to try it.

I was nostalgic for Jello poke cake and tried one a couple years ago, @dammitjanetfromvegas. They’re fun definitely a dinosaur as far as I can tell.

A tip for eating cupcakes (your fingers will still get sticky but you won’t get icing all over your head) is to cut the iced top off and turn it upside down on the bottom for a sandwich. I usually do that with regular iced sheet and flat pan cakes, too. You don’t get a mouthful of icing.

If you’ve not tried Angel Food in the toaster, do. Slice about the thickness of bread and just drop it in the toaster. Gives it a whole new dimension. I think it taste a bit like cotton candy.

Finally, I rarely see the old fashioned ‘tunnel of fudge’ Bundt cakes any more. I see cakes baked in Bundt pans, but not the filled ones that popularized the cake in the first place.

@ibstubro Interestingly, filled cakes have become quite popular in restaurants. Molten cakes, that sort of thing. They are mini individual cakes served with some ice cream and sauce on top.

@dammitjanetfromvegas “Jello poke cake”

What a trip down Memory Lane! I made tons of Jello poke cakes during the 1970s; they were huge hits, and people loved them.

@jca “Cupcakes are still popular for kids’ parties.”

Cupcakes have always been great for children’s parties. They’re classic kiddie treats, and they always will be. For a while, though, cupcakes were all the rage among adults; cities couldn’t seem to pack-in enough cupcake bakeries. It was the grown-up cupcake craze that grew meteorically and faded just as abruptly.

Cupcakes are still popular for adults.

@Love_my_doggie It was one of my mother’s favorites.

Hotcakes. They’re just not selling like they used to. ~