Birthday Party Recipes

The most popular flavor at the celebrated New York City bakery is vanilla for a reason! With a moist, tender crumb and rich buttercream frosting, these cupcakes are a true classic. This recipe comes from "More from Magnolia: Recipes from the World-Famous Bakery and Allysa Torey's Home Kitchen."

This sweet and simple sheet cake marries two great flavors that just plain belong together: rich and tender chocolate cake, and creamy peanut-butter frosting. For maximum fluff, go for a classic smooth variety of peanut butter, and plug in your mixer—manpower alone won't be enough. Scatter chopped peanuts along the edges for any crunchy fans in the house.

This burnished beauty gets its flavor from fresh lemon zest, and its stature from not-too-sweet meringue. (More than half of the sugar gets boiled into a syrup that you beat into egg whites—the result is cool, thick, and silky.) Dollop tons on top for a dramatic presentation, and if you don't have a kitchen torch, brown the peaks with a quick blast under the broiler.

Birthday? Anniversary? Going-away party? This super-easy, one-bowl layer cake is the perfect dessert for any gathering of chocolate buffs.

This classic southern cake can be over-the-top sweet. Enter coconut sugar, a sweetener from the sap of the coconut tree's flower buds. While it has no coconut flavor, it does bring a caramelized, almost savory complexity to baked goods. It's perfect in a cake that's plenty sweet (as well as moist), thanks to the fresh banana and pineapple. This recipe appears in our cookbook, "A New Way to Bake" (Clarkson Potter).

This light, flavorful dessert, filled and topped with seven-minute frosting and coconut, is a little slice of heaven.

Cake, cream, and berries combine in a treat that's twice as delectable as the sum of its parts. The buttery cake soaks up the strawberry juices, while the whipped cream adds an airy richness.

What's gooey on the inside, crackly on top, and supremely delicious all over?Our fresh take on this crowd-pleasing dessert. Unsweetened chocolate and brown sugar impart a rich, well-rounded flavor, while adding a bit of oil to the batter results in the addictively chewy texture that makes this version an instant classic.

Make this glaze while the Cinnamon-Bun Bites are baking. Recipe adapted with permission from "Williams-Sonoma Family Meals: Creating Traditions in the Kitchen," copyright 2009 by Maria Helm Sinskey and Williams-Sonoma, published by Weldon Owen, San Francisco.

These blueberry cupcakes are breakfast for dessert. Fresh blueberries are mixed into vanilla cake -- rather than muffin -- batter, which is then topped with cinnamon streusel and swirls of blueberry-cream cheese icing. This recipe appeared in episode 308 of Martha Bakes.

Talk about a delightful twist on berries and cream! This light and airy chiffon cake will instantly transport you to cloud nine, and the luscious fruit filling is what summer dreams are made of.