When it comes to dinner-table domination, it’s hard to beat a good layer cake. Rising high above a pie and decorated with dramatic swirls of frosting—chocolate, pink, white—a cake has the power to transfix everyone who beholds it.
The good news for cake lovers is that there’s never been a better time to get a great one shipped to you. When neighborhood foot traffic was curtailed during the pandemic, pro bakers from all over the US teamed up with mail-order companies or learned how to deliver their cakes to sweet-toothed customers themselves. Meg Ray, founder of Miette in San Francisco, first experimented with sending cakes for a friend’s Zoom birthday party in 2020; it was such a success that she now ships her rich chocolate Scharffen Berger cake by UPS Next Day Air nationally.
