When we speak of cheesecakes, versatility may be one of their main attributes, and Polish sernik is no exception. Traditionally, sernik is made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour and twaróg, Polish cow’s milk cheese with a crumbly texture similar to Italian ricotta.
Everything else is a matter of choice — for instance, sernik can have a crust at the bottom, at both the top and the bottom, or have no crust at all. The filling can be based on twaróg cheese or enhanced with fresh, dried or canned fruit.
TIME
- Preparation time: 10 min
- Cooking time: 1 h
- Total time: 1 h 10 min
This Swedish chocolate cake is incredibly easy to prepare, and the basic recipe requires no more than seven ingredients: butter, salt, sugar, cocoa, flour, eggs, and vanilla. Because the cake does not include any baking soda, it will have gooey insides, similar to that of a fudgy brownie.
Sugar, salt, cocoa, and vanilla are added to melted butter, followed by flour and eggs. The resulting batter is poured into a buttered and floured cake pan and baked for approximately 20-30 minutes, depending on the recipe. Once baked, the cake is dusted with sugar or cocoa, and usually chilled, but can be eaten warm.
TIME
- Preparation time: 15 min
- Cooking time: 10 min
- Total time: 25 min
MAIN INGREDIENTS
The famous Russian dessert, medovik, is a honey cake cherished for its tender texture and profoundly delicate taste. Medovik combines multiple honey biscuit layers with a tangy sour cream filling. The traditional medovik is made with a few simple ingredients — flour, sugar, eggs, sour cream, and honey — but today’s variations also include dark and white chocolate, nuts, fresh or dried fruits, and various other flavorings.
Modern adaptations also replace sour cream with yogurt, whipped cream, condensed milk, buttercream, or custard, while the layers are commonly flavored with cinnamon and ginger powder. Even though making medovik seems like a long and laborious task, on average, it only takes about two hours to complete.
TIME
- Preparation time: 2 h
- Cooking time: 1 h 30 min
- Total time: 10 h 30 min
MAIN INGREDIENTS
Basque cheesecake is an unpretentious crustless cheese-based cake that enjoys immense international popularity. It was invented at La Viña, a small pintxo bar located in San Sebastián, where it is known simply as tarta de queso. The cake is made with only five ingredients: cream cheese, eggs, sugar, heavy cream, and a spoonful of flour.
The ingredients are combined and mixed into a smooth batter, which is then poured into a pan. The key is to bake the cake at a slightly higher temperature. This quickly bakes the top and the sides, creating a dark, caramelized layer that provides flavor and structure while the center remains smooth, custardy, and creamy.
TIME
- Preparation time: 10 min
- Cooking time: 40 min
- Total time: 50 min
MAIN INGREDIENTS
Torta Caprese (a.k.a. Caprese cake) is a popular Neapolitan dessert, originally from Campania’s island of Capri. This dark chocolate cake is famous for the total absence of flour and yeast, relying solely on whipped egg whites for volume.
When baked, torta Caprese will be crunchy on the outside and soft and moist on the inside and is sprinkled with icing sugar before serving. Invented a century ago, probably by mistake, Torta Caprese is an iconic dessert of Campania, which became famous throughout Italy and has gone through many interpretations.
While the classic recipe relies on just five ingredients — dark chocolate, almonds, sugar, butter, and eggs — it’s not uncommon to stumble upon different variations that include lemons, white chocolate, liquor, orange zest, pistachios, and even yeast.
TIME
- Preparation time: 15 min
- Cooking time: 1 h
- Total time: 7 h 15 min
Although it has its roots in French chocolate soufflé and chocolate coulant, the molten chocolate cake — better known as lava cake — is beautifully simple in preparation. Dark chocolate is melted with butter in a double boiler over simmering water, and at the same time, eggs, egg yolks, sugar, and a little bit of flour are mixed until they reach a foamy texture.
Melted chocolate and butter are added to this mixture and combined until homogeneous. The next step is to pour the batter into single portion ramekins which have been buttered and sprinkled with flour. The molten chocolate cake is then baked for around 12 minutes in a pre-heated oven, and the most important thing is to take them out at the right moment while the center is still liquid.
TIME
- Preparation time: 5 min
- Cooking time: 12 min
- Total time: 18 min
MAIN INGREDIENTS
A thick layer of smooth, wobbly vanilla custard sandwiched between two layers of puff or flaky pastry dusted with powdered sugar — that, in short, is the description of krémes, a favorite Hungarian dessert. Thin sheets of flaky pastry or puff pastry dough are baked in the oven until lightly golden, and the custard is made by cooking egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, milk, flour, and sometimes gelatin over low heat.
The egg white snow is often added to this mixture to give it an airy texture, and some quick-fix recipes suggest making the custard with vanilla pudding powder. Traditionally, krémes are served cold, cut into large squares generously sprinkled with powdered sugar.
TIME
- Preparation time: 1 h
- Cooking time: 40 min
- Total time: 4 h
MAIN INGREDIENTS
Although known outside of Japan as Japanese cheesecake or Japanese cotton cheesecake, in its home country of Japan, it goes by the name souffle cheesecake. It is just one of three kinds of cheesecake consumed in Japan, rare cheesecake and baked cheesecake being the other two.
The ingredients needed to make it are cream cheese, eggs, butter, milk, flour, sugar, and cornstarch. Whisking the egg whites separately then folding the meringue into the batter is key in achieving the light and wobbly texture the cake is famous for.
TIME
- Preparation time: 45 min
- Cooking time: 1 h 15 min
- Total time: 2 h 10 min
This cake is made with layers of almond or almond and hazelnut meringue and whipped cream or buttercream. The term can also refer to the meringue layers themselves instead of the finished cake, and they can be combined with a variety of fillings and toppings.
The meringue is made with ground or finely chopped almonds or almonds and hazelnuts that are folded into beaten egg whites before baking. The recipe for dacquoise can be used in a wide range of desserts, and it can serve as a base for anything from macarons and individual cakes to pavlovas.
TIME
- Preparation time: 2 h
- Cooking time: 1 h
- Total time: 5 h
Described as the "fattiest pastry in all of Europe" by the New York Times in 2011, a bready version of canelés, and a caramelized croissant, kouign-amann is a rustic round pastry from Brittany, precisely the town Douarnenez. According to the traditional recipe, it consists of three components in varying amounts: 40% bread dough, 30% butter, and 30% sugar.
The bread dough is just flour, yeast, salt, and water, while the butter has to be salted, and generally speaking, all the ingredients must be of top-notch quality. Kouign-amann is prepared by the process of lamination, in which the butter and the sugar are folded into the dough to create super flaky layers.
TIME
- Preparation time: 1 h
- Cooking time: 40 min
- Total time: 1 h 40 min
TasteAtlas food rankings are based on the ratings of the TasteAtlas audience, with a series of mechanisms that recognize real users and that ignore bot, nationalist or local patriotic ratings, and give additional value to the ratings of users that the system recognizes as knowledgeable. For the “Top 49 Cake Recipes” list until March 27, 2025, 18,097 ratings were recorded, of which 13,141 were recognized by the system as legitimate. TasteAtlas Rankings should not be seen as the final global conclusion about food. Their purpose is to promote excellent local foods, instill pride in traditional dishes, and arouse curiosity about dishes you haven’t tried.