It’s what very well could be the next hot commodity: old-fashioned layer cake.

“It’s a nostalgia thing. People want desserts that are flavorful and homey. They get that with layer cakes.” Barda

If layer cakes end up not being the next baking big thing, Blake thinks it could be madeleines, the shell-shaped cookies that author Marcel Proust made famous when he had a character in his book “In Search of Lost Time” remember key details of his childhood through the smell and taste of the pastry dunked in tea. pastry chef James Blake

They’ve popped up lately next to the registers at Starbucks outlets, and the high-end cookware stores aren’t the only places you can find the unique pans needed to bake them. Target recently introduced a line of silicone madeleine pans.

PORTLAND, Ore. – For the past couple of years, bakery cases across the country have been dominated by cupcakes.

The little darlings have captivated our collective psyche because they summon memories of 1960s birthday parties and snack times at Cub Scout meetings. And it hasn’t hurt that in the right hands and with the best ingredients, they can be hopelessly addictive.

But in the food world, today’s hot dish is destined to become yesterday’s news. Remember how doughnuts were supposed to take over the world just a few years ago?

There are signs that the cupcake craze is beginning to cool off.

The pans no longer dominate the front of the cookware stores. Grocery stores aren’t stacking trays of them next to the checkout lines for impulse purchases the way they used to.

So what’s the next big thing in the baking world? Trend spotting is no easy science. As in the fashion world, lots of ideas float around before something clicks, reaching that perfect storm of consensus.

“Trends percolate up slowly,” says Nick Doughty, store director for Elephants Delicatessen in Portland. “Usually a magazine does an article on a specific pastry chef, and from there some idea catches on.”

Or, in the case of cupcakes, it was a hot TV show that set the locomotive rolling. On “Sex and the City,” the characters Miranda and Carrie became obsessed with cupcakes from Manhattan’s Magnolia Bakery, and it wasn’t long before the frosted morsels were as hot as a pair of spikey Jimmy Choos.

When baker Jocelyn Barda first opened her super-cool Bakery Bar in Portland in late 2005, her staff couldn’t make cupcakes fast enough to keep up with customer demand. These days, they still are popular, but they’re no longer the shop’s best seller.

What’s outpacing them? It’s what very well could be the next hot commodity: old-fashioned layer cake.

Barda thinks layer cakes are on the rise for the same reasons we fell in love with cupcakes: “It’s a nostalgia thing. People want desserts that are flavorful and homey. They get that with layer cakes.”

At Elephants, layer cakes are coming on strong, too. And pastry chef Amy Nack agrees that nostalgia is the cause.

“We’re moving into a time where baby boomers are spending money and they’re looking for things that remind them of when they were young,” she says. “Just look at the new Mustang.”

But customers aren’t looking for cakes made out of mixes, even if that’s the way Mom would have baked them. Nack says what’s selling are updated interpretations of classic cakes.

“There’s nothing new in the baking world,” she says. “It’s all been done before. It’s a matter of putting your own twist to bring them up to date.”

Nack says most of the twists in the Elephants kitchen come from a combination of customer input and the baking team’s collaborative approach, where they beat around ideas to come up with something fresh. She says that process is particularly fun with layer cakes because they can go so many ways.

“You can add just about anything to a layer cake,” she says. “You get all these interesting flavor combinations.”

Nack recently introduced a banana cake to the Elephants pastry lineup that she says was inspired by customers’ love of banana bread. She and the other bakers talked about how to capture that essence in a cake. The result is a three-layered beauty that’s studded with walnuts and covered in a cream cheese frosting and decorated with dried banana chips.

Barda has a similar philosophy with Bakery Bar’s 4-inch layer cakes, which update retro faves like devil’s food, coconut, and carrot cake, which Barda says she updated with an intense spice combination she dreamed up. She says the small cakes are particularly popular for birthdays and holidays.

“People think about cakes and they think “celebration,”‘ Barda says.

You’d have a hard time coming up with any cake more celebratory than the 12-layer chocolate cake that was a recent star on the dessert menu at Bluehour, a Portland restaurant. Each 9-inch cake had six layers of buttermilk cake divided by six layers of chocolate ganache. Pastry chef James Blake estimates each of the cakes had more than 3 pounds of ganache.

Making a cake with 12 layers is a lot of work, but Blake says that’s the appeal for him.

“Building cakes is fun. Instead of putting creme brulee in a dish and baking it in the oven, you’re really hands-on with it,” he says. “You put more into a cake than you do with other desserts – you really get to put your heart into it.”

If layer cakes end up not being the next baking big thing, Blake thinks it could be madeleines, the shell-shaped cookies that author Marcel Proust made famous when he had a character in his book “In Search of Lost Time” remember key details of his childhood through the smell and taste of the pastry dunked in tea.

“I think people have gotten over the hump that you have to have high tea to have madeleines,” he says, noting that Bluehour serves them with a lemon-chardonnay sorbet. “People like the little crisp outside, and the nice fluffy inside. They’ll be around for a while.”

There are other signs that madeleines could be a contender. They’ve popped up lately next to the registers at Starbucks outlets, and the high-end cookware stores aren’t the only places you can find the unique pans needed to bake them. Target recently introduced a line of silicone madeleine pans.

Susanna Linse, spokeswoman for Sur La Table stores, says interest in madeleine pans has definitely increased, and that they’re a logical next step after cupcakes.

“We’ve had great success with cupcakes, and the mini trend is continuing to evolve with madeleines.”

Regardless of whether layer cakes or madeleines are what supplants cupcakes, at Elephants they already are on the hunt for what comes after that. The cooks there are developing updated versions of those throwback lunchbox treats Ding Dongs, using top-grade chocolate and vanilla bean cream. And come Easter time, they’ll have homemade marshmallow Peeps.

“Come on!” Nack says. “Everyone loves Peeps.”

And it’s easy to imagine a flock of them decorating the top of a layer cake.

Five recent baking obsessions

Muffins: A staple of early 1990s coffee breaks with wide-ranging variations, from super-sized cakey monstrosities from warehouse stores, to pop-in-your-mouth mini sizes. Their popularity made big sellers out of special pans producing just the muffin tops.

Bagels: Though frozen bagels had been widely available since the 1970s, they reached critical mass only in the mid-’90s, when chains like Noah’s and Einstein Bros. made freshly baked varieties widely available. Sales dropped significantly in 2002, as low-carb dieting became a national obsession.

Scones: Starbucks is directly responsible for the ultra-sweet updating of this Scottish biscuit. In the late ’90s, the coffee giant began filling its bakery cases with dense cookielike pastries filled with cranberries, blueberries, nuts and what-have-you. These days, they’re touting “healthy” multigrain versions with zero grams trans fat. Not surprisingly, they aren’t very good.

Doughnuts: Oddly, while Americans were shunning bagels during the Atkins era, we were also obsessing about sugar-glazed rings from Krispy Kreme. When outlets arrived in new regions, customers lined up for hours for the sweet treats. Interest waned in 2005 as the brand’s cult following faded. In the end, it was a very good doughnut, but it was still just a doughnut.

Cupcakes: The recent return of these staples of the ’60s and ’70s inspired best-selling cookbooks, specialized baking equipment, even the popular blog Cupcakes Take the Cake on the Internet. The resurgence gave legions of home cooks new uses for all those muffin pans they bought in the ’90s.