Lazy Daisy Cake Recipe

Lazy daisy cake has a catchy name, but I think whoever came up with it was smart and industrious. That’s my kind of person, and lazy daisy cake is my kind of cake. 

It’s a simple affair that you can pull off using one bowl and precious little active time. About an hour later you can cut off a piece to enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee. Best of all, it has a caramelized broiled topping that makes it very special, despite its ease of prep. This charming midcentury snacking cake is ripe for a comeback.

What Is Lazy Daisy Cake? 

Lazy daisy cake appears in a 1949 community cookbook I love, The Good Shepherd Cook Book. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd of Bay Ridge put it out, though I came across it in my friend’s attic in California. It had somehow traveled from midcentury Brooklyn to millennial Sonoma County. This cookbook is pure gold, offering up such delights as stewed horseradish and crab Marnay. Like most community cookbooks, desserts rightfully take up over half of its pages.

I made the book’s lazy daisy cake recipe (contributed by Mrs. H. Johnson) just to find out what it was like. It’s what I’d call a busy day cake. You bake an easy, one-bowl hot milk sponge cake in an 8×8-inch pan, then top it straight from the oven with a brown sugar and coconut frosting mixture and broil until bubbly. The cake itself is plain; the topping is intensely sweet. On your plate, the two come together to create perfect harmony.

This Hot Milk Sponge Cake Is Hard To Screw Up

Sponge cakes used to be a lot more prevalent in American baking. They’re springy cakes without much fat; their structure comes mostly from eggs. For lazy daisy cake, you don’t need to beat the eggs and sugar much–a good 60-second whisking by hand will do it. Then you fold in flour and baking powder, followed by warmed milk plus a teensy cube of melted butter. 

I love cakes like this because their spongy texture holds up to fillings and toppings. Plus they’re hard to screw up. I imagine a long-ago harried housewife baking lazy daisy cake in the middle of a day of laundry folding, diaper changing, vacuuming, lawn mowing, and checkbook balancing. 

Heck, I’ve been that wife, only I’d be doing those things in the precious hours between shifts at work. No matter your gender, marital status, or level of laziness, we’ve all had days when we want a sweet reward. And sometimes you have to bake it yourself. But baking is a privilege worth making a little time for (nowadays we call it self-care).   

Easy Broiled Topping Makes the Cake

If you like the sticky-sweet, coconut-webbed frosting on a German chocolate cake, then lazy daisy cake is totally up your alley. While the cake bakes, you mix up brown sugar, cream, coconut, and melted butter. Then you spread it on the hot cake and slip it under the broiler to melt the sugar and get the coconut a little toasty. When the cake cools, you have a brittle layer on top that’s almost like candy.

The following day, the topping softens and partially disintegrates into the cake, imbuing it with that caramel flavor. The cake by that point isn’t as fresh-looking, but day two is my favorite day to eat a piece. 

Lazy Daisy Cake Variations

The various lazy daisy cake recipes I’ve seen around are mostly the same. Why mess with perfection? You can personalize it a bit if you like.

• Increase the vanilla in the hot milk sponge cake to 2 teaspoons.
• Toast the coconut before mixing up the topping. Yes, a few shreds of coconut will get toasty in the broiling step, but not enough that they are toasted-toasted.
• Add finely chopped nuts (such as pecans) to the topping. 
• Create another layer of flavor by browning the butter when you melt it for the topping.
• Whatever you do, do not omit the coconut. You need it to give the topping its structure–the lattice of coconut shreds supports the gooey caramel.

More Vintage Baking Recipes