Birthday Party Recipes

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).

With three shades of chocolate, these cakes are as pleasing to the eye as they are to the sweet tooth.

This luscious chocolate-hazelnut cake is coated with a ganache made from chocolate and cream. It's topped with a mountain of bittersweet chocolate curls, and surrounded by crunchy praline hazelnuts coated in tempered chocolate and rolled in cocoa powder.

If the cream filling of the sandwich cookies is discolored by cookie crumbs when twisted open, gently scrape with a paring knife to remove loose crumbs before using.

This classic coconut cream pie is well worth the time it takes to cook. It'll be one of the best recipes in your repetoire. 

This recipe for delicious strawberry cupcakes is from Candace Nelson of Sprinkles Cupcakes. There is fresh strawberry purée in both the cake batter and the buttercream frosting.

Whip up a crowd-friendly batch cocktail for summer with this recipe, which calls for just four ingredients—fresh limes, sugar, fresh strawberry, and white rum.

Swapping coconut milk in for cream in a standard chocolate-ganache recipe yields a rich dairy-free topping. Because of the high ratio of coconut milk to chocolate, the frosting will take longer to thicken, but the decadent taste and airy texture are well worth the wait. Pair it with our Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes.

An American-born beauty, the cheesecake gets upgraded with a triple dose of chocolate. It's in the crust, in the filling, and over the top. To help prevent cracks, turn off the oven and let the cheesecake sit inside for an hour. To cut the cleanest slices, use a knife dipped in warm water.

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.

Whipped egg whites are the secret behind this airy, moist cake. Decorate each layer with our Chocolate Frosting for a spectacular birthday or special-occasion dessert.

A white cake is an all-American classic recipe. This white cake recipe will become your favorite for celebrations and holidays -- and it tastes just like the white cake you'd find in your local bakery. (Don't worry. We won't tell your guests how easy it is!)

Chocolate melted in each of these sweetsis like built-in frosting.

Martha recreates the iconic dessert from Blum's Bakery in San Francisco. It teams a light sponge cake with rich coffee frosting and crunchy shards of coffee-flavored candy. Martha made this recipe on "Martha Bakes" episode 710.

Light on effort, heavy on flavor, pound cake has earned its centuries-long popularity. Learn how to make this traditional, crowd-pleasing dessert.

This Southern-style Hummingbird layer cake features a crowd-pleasing combination of banana, pineapple, and coconut. The name's origin remains something of a mystery: Some say it's because the cake is as sweet as nectar; others, that it makes you hum with happiness.

This childhood favorite, also known as reindeer food or muddy buddies, gets the grown-up treatment and big chocolate flavor with the addition of hazelnut spread and cocoa powder.

A generous helping of two types of chips--semisweet and milk chocolate--makes these soft, cakey cookies--an alternative to the traditional recipe--even more tempting than usual.

This deep, rich confection topped with fudgy frosting is ideal for special occasions or simply for chocolate lovers. Martha's uses Valrhona cocoa powder; for best results, use the highest-quality ingredients you can find. For an impressive presentation, let the layers cool completely before assembling, dust off any loose crumbs, and use the better layer for the top.

A light vanilla layer cake filled with bright, lemon mousse is "frosted" with toasted marshmallow-like meringue for a truly magnificent dessert.

This fluffy vanilla cake gets it name (and flavor!) from the scalded milk in the batter. Martha made this recipe on episode 705 of Martha Bakes.

The frosting for these cupcakes is tinted a pretty pale shade of pink with pureed raspberries (not food coloring), which also adds flavor. Martha made this recipe on "Martha Bakes" episode 808.

This devilishly delicious, light and airy, all-occasion cake recipe was adapted from "Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook," and the frosting recipe is courtesy of Matt Lewis of Baked.

White cake is layered with a fruit and nut filling and slathered with fluffy frosting in this traditional Southern dessert. Martha made this recipe on Martha Bakes episode 709.