February 6th marks exactly one year from when I made the Red Velvet Cake to start this project. As of this post, I have only made 53 of the 240 cakes from the America’s Test Kitchen The Perfect Cake cookbook. There are so many tasty-looking recipes I look forward to making. That being said, I’m going to use the one year anniversary as a milestone of success but, dial back my ambition going forward. I’m not going to commit to making a cake every single week. I have some other non-cake baking projects that I want to have the time and energy to try. And sometimes I just need a week off. I will still document the cakes from this cookbook as I make them.

With that out of the way, let me attempt to do what all the cool sites are doing these days… a year in review.

Worst Cake: Tahini Banana Snack Cake

To date, this is the ONLY cake that I tossed out for no other reason but that fact that it tasted horrible. I really do wonder if the tahini I purchased for this cake was rancid. Having never tried tahini before, I don’t really know. All that being said, one bad cake out of 53 is a pretty good run.

Best Cakes

There’s no way I’d be able to chose one cake as the best. So here’s the shortlist of my favorites

  • Texas Sheet Cake

    This cake has a brownie-like consistency. It is amazing warmed and dolloped with vanilla ice cream.

  • Margarita Cheesecake

    The tanginess of the lime and margarita mix, the airiness of the filling, the saltiness of the crust… mmmmm this cake has it all.

  • Lemon Buttermilk Sheet Cake

    This may become my go-to sheet cake to take to events. It’s easy to assemble, the topping has a nice crunch, and lemon is a very refreshing dessert flavor.

  • New York Cheesecake

    It’s cheesecake. Enough said.

  • Milk Chocolate Cheesecake

    It’s cheesecake. But chocolate. Enough said.

  • Magic Chocolate Flan Cake

    This cake is rich, decadent, and full of textures. Flan seems to get a bad rap by many, but I’m a big fan.

  • Lemon Pudding Cake

    This dessert is delightful. Part cake and part pudding, it’s a refreshing treat in a single serving size.

Ingredient Analysis

After finishing the Salted Caramel Cupcakes and already feeling slightly nostalgic for the project, I sat down and totalled the amounts of the most common ingredients used throughout the recipes. The tally for each cake included ingredient amounts for any frostings or fillings used in the cake. The Rainbow Cake is a statistical outlier due to its sheer size. That cake was massive using 88 tablespoons of butter and nearly three pounds of sugar. It topped the charts for both of the ingredients, so I’ve excluded it when looking at cakes that used the most in those categories.

Butter 🧈 - 891 tablespoons or about 27.8 pounds

Wanting to know the amount of butter I used was impetus for the analysis. 49 of the 53 recipes called for some amount of butter. The Confetti Cake used the most at 52 tablespoons or 1.6lbs.

Sugar - 47.4 pounds total of all types

In this case, I summed the amount of granulated, brown, or confectioner sugar. This doesn’t include other types of sweeteners. All forms of brown sugar were summed together. The Wellesley Fudge Cake used the most at 2.28 pounds

The breakdown by type is:

  • Granulated Sugar: 30.8 pounds
  • Brown Sugar: 4.1 pounds
  • Confectioner Sugar: 12.5 pounds

Eggs 🥚 - 15.5 dozen

This is an interesting data point. Because there are some recipes that used only whites and some that used only yolks I counted them separately. But I was astonished to see that the difference between the two values was just 2… I used 185 egg whites versus 187 egg yolks. The Magic Chocolate Flan Cake used the most with 8 egg whites and 12 egg yolks.

Flour - 25.29 pounds total of all types

Most of the recipes used all purpose flour which accounted for 18.2 pounds of the total. The remaining seven pounds were cake flour. Surprisingly, by using 1.17 pounds the Cider Glazed Apple Bundt Cake used even more flour than the Rainbow Cake.

Vanilla Extract - 132.5 teaspoons or 2.75 cups

50 of the 53 cakes used some amount a vanilla extract. There were four cakes that used five teaspoons of extract. One of things I’ve learned throughout this project is to NOT skimp on quantity or quality of flavorings. So while this is a pricey ingredient, I know it really enhanced the taste of these cakes.

Everything Else

Because I spent a lot of time adding things up…

  • Baking Powder: 57.75 teaspoons
  • Baking Soda: 20 teaspoons
  • Salt: 37 teaspoons
  • Milk: 1 gallon
  • Heavy Cream: 1 gallon
  • Buttermilk: 0.7 gallon
  • Cocoa Powders: 1.5 pounds
  • Chocolate (All forms including white): 7.56 pounds
  • Cream Cheese: 13.375 pounds