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Q: Where can I find real cake?
I honestly can't stand Chinese cakes. Angel cakes and whipped cream? Seriously? I've paid good money for some seemingly-delicious looking cake. But... it all tastes the same; like dried, spoongy dog crap with fruit on top. Whomever was in charge of bringing cakes to China needs to be placed in a burlap bag and savagely beaten with bamboo sticks. Savagely.
Well, cake in China is kind of like chocolate in China. They taste good enough to Chinese, because those foods are not from China. Chinese people would probably think American Chinese food sucks. I doubt they use any kind of real extract in the cakes, which helps give it flavor. I suggest that if you'd really like a real cake, get a box of cake mix and find a place where you can bake it. Or maybe you can try steaming it? Or make pancakes out of it, put icing between the layers, and make a layered cake out of it. It would certainly be easier than making it from scratch.
I like cake, not a huge fan though. What I missed more in China was a brownie. They had cupcakes that were pretty decent in China, but there was nothing like brownies there.
cooter:
I had a brownie at one of those super fancy Haagen-Dazs places once. Topped with ice cream of course. But that thing was hard as a rock....had to ask for a knife. 
Hulk:
I don't really like cake, and I almost never ate it back home. However, Chinese cake just sucked so bad and made me want to try some "real" cake out of spite. I also tried all the pastries, and was left extremely disappointed.
I could really use a brownie right now... thanks a lot, lol.
I've had OK cake. I was thinking of giving a bakery a recipe for carrot cake. So many baked things a greasy. I've had big cup cakes that seemed to have oil poured on them. Donut type things that would OK if they weren't so oily. I liked custard tarts if I could get them with flakey pastry, sometimes the pastry was like bad pie dough. So many things in China look OK and aren't that I was always reluctant to try new things.
artdio:
I love carrot cake but cant find it in Shanghai, I purchased some banana cake at Walmart that isn't bad at all, the fist pastry I've had that didn't taste like oil.
Make from scratch, pretty easy here, I often make cheesecake, carrot cake, cookies and brownies.
Carrot cake is fairly easy if you can get a block of Philly cream cheese. The rest is basically carrots, flour, sugar, and some vanilla extract.
TedDBayer:
plus walnuts, raisins,and poppyseeds. cinnamon.
Where do you buy cream cheese. I don't think there is a word for cheese in Chinese, because they don't have any, 5000 years without cheese and they call that a civilization?xxxcdbxxx:
Shit sorry forgot to mention oven
I have a small "Baking Materials" shop behind my apartment, they have cream cheese for cheap. Otherwise basically all Metro supermarkets have it or you should have some type of major supermarket in your city that has some decent imported stuff.
We have a Dennis supermarket in the center of the city filled with imports, cheeses, snapple, pasta, cereal, ham, american Hormel hot dogs, etc.
You don't really need the cinnamon and all that jazz. Beggars can't be choosers
xxxcdbxxx:
Better yet big Hulk, I got a no bake recipe for you, real fat, if you like Reeses Peanut butter cups.
Take a cup of peanut butter, a cup of butter melted and a cup of icing sugar (real fine sugar) and 2 cups of a biscuit crushed (i usually use digestive biscuits) mix all that jazz together, put it on the bottom of a square pan should be 9x9inches. Put in the fridge. Then get some chocolate or choc. chips and maybe just 1 more spoonful of peanutbutter put in the microwave (if you dont have you can boil some water and put the choc. in a metal bowl and put in the water and stir)
ok then spread the chocolate over the peanut butter, put it back in the fridge and let it sit.
I served this at x-mas for my Chinese gf and some other Chinese they all loved it. Its the only sweet that I make that my gf actually likes.
allrecipes.com
Tastes are different everywhere. What you so eloquently call dog crap is what the Chinese consider to be the real thing. It is adapted to their taste buds. Similarly, what you call "real" food is dog crap to Chinese.
I've had Chinese friends taste General Tso's chicken, Green&Black's dark chocolate and they call those dog crap too.
The only way to go is
1. Buy oven
2. Hunt down quality ingredients
3. Bake
Btw. I do not agree with people saying that it is adapted to the Chinese. I have served cakes and desserts made as my grandmother would have made it, meaning, plenty butter, cream, sugar etc, and so far everyone when they taste it are in ecstasy. ... and then the "you should sell this" conversation start.
But of course it is shocking with actual flavors when all you have ever tasted in you life is soy sauce.
Scandinavian:
Oven http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.1.fSx73v&id=17483457483
(we have a previous model of this, serves us well through two years now, note, just randomly found on taubao, not sure it is the right taobao shop to shop at)
You can get them smaller in size, get something with at least 2000 watts power, and look at what maximum temperature is, for pizza and bread the loser to 300C you can get the better, ours goes to 230C if works fine, but bread cannot get a crispy surface at this temperature.
The only way I got good cake was to go to the few expat-owned cafes/restaurants in my city. They could do cake. If there's a bigger, expat-populated, city near you, then look for a foreign run cafe. Urumqi had something like 5 or 6 that did good dessert and it's at the arse end of nowhere, so I'd expect any tier 2 city to have a bunch.
Chinese cake? No. If I wanted something sweet when I'd eaten a Chinese lunch then I'd stick to the Portuguese tart thingeys at the bakeries (suprisingly good tarts, although pretty much everything else would suck) or to those toffee-hawthorney things.
If you get desperate, the world of no-bake cake awaits you...
http://www.babble.com/best-recipes/8-no-bake-cakes-and-pies/
Actually, that chocolate tart looks pretty good.
MissA:
Or this, this is epic. Does China do raspberries, though?
http://themerrymakersisters.com/for-the-love-of-cake-paleo-choc-raspberry-love-no-bake-cake-recipe/
Jnusb416:
Oh, those hawthorne disk/candy things? Omg, they were awesome. I miss those.
Scandinavian:
You can sometimes find fresh raspberry in the supermarkets.
Also, China does have mulberry, sort of raspberry's tasteless cousin. But I think mulberry season is over this year.
MissA:
Who dared thumbs down my cake???? You will die a peasant's death!
Here, I found you some decent brownie recipes. They're flourless! Why is that good? Because they'll be more fudgy and awesome. I haven't tried these recipes myself, but I definitely would if I ate dessert more often. They tend to use "fancy" ingredients, so just substitute when necessary.
A basic flourless recipe: http://www.homemademommy.net/2013/01/flourless-brownies.html
A recipe using nut butter (you can use peanut butter): http://easypeas-y.blogspot.com/2012/03/paleo-brownies.html
And for extra awesomeness, a recipe involving bacon: http://civilizedcavemancooking.com/grain-free-goodies/chocolate-bacon-bites/
Enjoy.
The real cake can be find at the bakeries or you can try the icecream cakes at DQ (dairy queen) They are delicious!!!!!!!!!!!! 
I went to Metro yesterday and bought the ingredients to make a cake. Ok it cost me a small fortune. But totally worth it. The food here is killing me lol.
During the weekend I have reminded myself that Pizza Hut, afternoons between 14 and 17 (that is 2pm to 5pm) have "afternoon tea" A piece of cake and a drink. You order as a set and the drink has free refills. There is a set with a chocolate cake and a scoop of icecream and a cup of black coffee for 28kuai. The cake, despite being petite, is very good (for China)
The cake thing has worried me ever since I came to China.Thank God someone finally asked.Its just spongy with whip cream.
Take a trip to Shanghai and enjoy. I was there last week and the quality of the cakes is on a complete different level than on other cities. We bough a chocolate cake at the Sunflour Bakery chain and I nearly cry of happiness when I tried it. A nice change after my experiences in Beijing.
Yes... I'd have to agree that you might need to try making it yourself. The ingredients aren't usually so easy to hunt down and get, but the end result is amaaaazing. To sit down with that and a cup of hot chocolate? Good stuff.
Also, I disagree that Chinese people just like those cakes. Usually only half the cake is eaten when it is bought for a birthday because everyone says how sickly sweet it is. Now, whenever there is a birthday in my Chinese family, I'm asked to bake a cake for it--they prefer it much more over the Chinese-style of a cake.
I searched hard for good cakes in Beijing. At the end I came up to this place called Cheese Home (Zhangzizhonglu station exit D, turn right and walk for approx. 30 meters). Their cakes are AMAZING. They get chocolate from Belgium, vanilla beans from Madagascar and cream from New Zealand. I'll just say that I'm Italian and their Tiramisu was almost as good as my mother's. I've been there several times already and I recommend you try their Tiramisu, cinnamon apples cake and chocolate banana cheesecake. They also serve good fresh coffee from Rickshaw Roasters. Best espresso in town. Go check it out and let me know 
