So, cloud cake. If you’ve been anywhere near Facebook this fall you’ve probably scrolled past it, usually a pale, kind of cracked cake on a plate with a caption saying something like “we made it and even my husband liked it,” and about four hundred comments asking for the recipe. It’s a flourless cake that’s mostly Greek yogurt and eggs, and after it bakes slowly in a water bath and spends a night in the fridge, it ends up somewhere between a cheesecake and a soufflé, though honestly lighter than either one.

I’ll be honest, the name made me roll my eyes a bit at first, because every second recipe online is a “cloud” something these days. But then you pull a cold slice out of the fridge and your fork goes through it with basically no effort, and the inside is soft and a little wobbly, tangy from the yogurt and bright from the lemon, and not overly sweet, which is the part I like most.

On Google Trends, US searches for cloud cake peaked around October 20 this year and they’ve stayed surprisingly high since, which kind of makes sense when you look at what goes in it (eggs, yogurt, a bit of sugar and some cornstarch, that’s really about it). And if you bake it the day before Thanksgiving, which lands on November 26 in 2026, it’s one dessert that won’t be fighting the turkey for oven space.

Cloud Cake at a Glance

Total time: about 5 hours 40 minutes, though you’re only actually busy for around 15 of those
Makes: 8 slices from one 8-inch (20 cm) springform pan
Difficulty: pretty easy, as long as you’re gentle when you fold the whites in
Shopping list: eggs (4), a big tub of full-fat Greek yogurt, one lemon, plus sugar, cornstarch and vanilla from the pantry
Make ahead: please do, day-two cloud cake beats day-one cloud cake
Flour or butter: none of either

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What Is Cloud Cake, Exactly?

Short answer: cloud cake is a flourless Greek yogurt cake. Eggs, sugar and a spoonful or two of cornstarch go in too, but the whites are whipped on their own and folded in last, which is why the thing balloons up in the oven. Then it sighs back down while cooling, and after a night in the fridge you’ve got something creamy that’s honestly closer to cheesecake than to cake.

The slightly annoying thing is that “cloud cake” isn’t really one recipe, it’s more like five or six different cakes all sharing a name. You’ll find a meringue-only version that’s closer to a giant soft marshmallow cookie, a 3-ingredient one made with condensed milk, the chocolate cloud cake Nigella Lawson made famous years ago, and a few more besides. The one everybody seems to be making right now, though, is the yogurt version, and that’s the one we’re doing here.

The Origins of Cloud Cake

None of this is a new idea, if we’re being fair about it. Americans were already baking angel food cake back in the 1870s, which is basically whipped egg whites, sugar and flour with no fat at all, and the French had their soufflés long before that. Then in the 1960s a Japanese chef named Tomotaro Kuzuno tasted a German käsekuchen while he was in Berlin, went home, and came up with what eventually became Japanese cotton cheesecake, the famously jiggly one you’ve probably seen bouncing around in videos.

Yogurt cloud cake feels a lot like that cheesecake’s cheaper and much more relaxed cousin, since it uses the same trick of separating the eggs and the same water bath, but swaps the cream cheese and butter for plain Greek yogurt. In France people have been making it as gâteau nuage for a few years now, and over here it mostly arrived this year through Facebook recipe groups, where it’s been shared so many times that you’d have a hard time figuring out who posted it first.

Ingredients for Cloud Cake (and What You Can Swap)

There are only seven ingredients, and to be honest two of them do nearly all of the work.

Full-fat Greek yogurt is pretty much the whole body of the cake, and the thick 5% kind is what gives you that creamy middle. Nonfat will technically work, but the cake tends to end up a bit spongy and almost rubbery.
Large eggs, split up. Yolks go in the yogurt bowl, whites go in the mixer bowl, and pretty much every bit of height this cake has comes out of that mixer bowl.
Sugar, only half a cup. Some of it goes with the yolks and the rest gets beaten into the whites, where it acts kind of like glue for the bubbles.
Cornstarch is the only “flour” in here, and without it the slices kind of slump on the plate.
Lemon (juice and zest), vanilla, salt. Tiny amounts. Leave the lemon out though and you’ve basically baked a tub of sweet yogurt, it’s fine but kind of dull.

Out of something, or just curious? Here’s what each swap does to the cake.

Ingredient	Swap	What changes
Full-fat Greek yogurt	2% Greek yogurt	A little less creamy, still sets fine
Full-fat Greek yogurt	Regular (thin) yogurt	Too wet; strain it 2 hours first or the cake won’t set
Cornstarch	Potato starch	Same amount, almost no difference
Cornstarch	All-purpose flour	Denser, more like regular cake, no longer flourless
Sugar (100 g)	Half a can sweetened condensed milk	Sweeter and richer, the Facebook-style version
Lemon	Orange zest + juice	Softer flavor, nice for the holidays

Equipment That Makes It Easier

An 8-inch (20 cm) springform pan is what I’d go with here. You can get away with a 9-inch, but the cake comes out thinner and usually finishes about 10 minutes sooner, so keep an eye on it. Beyond that you’ll want a roasting pan big enough for the springform to sit inside, some heavy-duty foil, and an electric mixer for the whites, because whipping four whites by hand is doable but your arm is not going to thank you for it.

The foil matters more than people think it does. What works is laying two sheets of heavy-duty foil across each other in a cross, setting the pan right in the middle and pressing the foil tight up the sides. America’s Test Kitchen recommends this two-sheet method because a single sheet tends to let water sneak in, and a soggy bottom is honestly the most common way this cake gets ruined.

How to Make Cloud Cake Step by Step

All the exact amounts and steps live in the recipe card, so below I just want to talk through the three places where this cake usually goes right or wrong.

Whip the Whites to Firm, Glossy Peaks

I start the whites on medium speed until they’re foamy, and only then start adding the sugar, slowly, a spoonful or so at a time. Lift the beaters out. If the peak stands up and only the very tip flops over, and the whole bowl has that shaving-cream shine, stop right there. Dry, lumpy, cottage-cheese-looking whites mean you kept going too long, and the cake will tell on you later with a big crack.

Fold in Thirds, Not All at Once

Folding whipped egg whites into Greek yogurt batter for cloud cake

The first third of the whites you can honestly just stir into the yogurt batter without worrying, since its only job is to loosen things up. The other two-thirds go in two rounds, and this part is slower. Spatula straight down the middle, drag it along the bottom, flip it up and over, quarter-turn the bowl, repeat. Thin white streaks? Leave them. Fat lumps of meringue floating around? Couple more folds.

Bake Low and Slow, Then Leave It Alone

Foil-wrapped springform pan of cloud cake batter in a water bath

320°F (160°C), water bath, done. That combo is the whole trick, gentle heat plus steam so the cake climbs evenly rather than puffing into a dome and splitting. Timer goes off? Oven off, door cracked open a few inches, and walk away for half an hour. Yank it out hot and the middle caves, trust me on this one.

If you’ve never baked anything in a water bath before, this is a really good one to learn on, since it’s a lot more forgiving than a classic cheesecake.

Cloud Cake Versions Trending in 2026

Because so many different cakes go by the same name, here’s a little cheat sheet to help you figure out which one you actually saw in your feed.

Version	Main ingredients	Texture	Best for
Greek yogurt cloud cake (this recipe)	Yogurt, eggs, sugar, cornstarch	Creamy, jiggly, light cheesecake	Everyday dessert, make-ahead
3-ingredient cloud cake	Condensed milk, eggs, cornstarch	Sweeter, sponge-like	Pantry baking, kids
2-ingredient “protein” cloud cake	Greek yogurt, eggs (plus sweetener)	Soft, eggy, custard-like	High-protein snack
Blender cloud cake	Cream cheese, butter, milk, eggs	Rich, closer to cheesecake	No folding at all
Meringue cloud cake	Egg whites, sugar, cornstarch	Marshmallow-like center	Fat-free treat
Coconut cloud cake	Tube-pan sponge, seven-minute frosting, coconut	Tall, fluffy layer cake	Holidays, big crowds

A few of these are really recent. The 2-ingredient protein version has been all over Facebook diet groups this month, usually pitched as a low-calorie dessert, and Martha Stewart’s team posted a coconut cloud layer cake with seven-minute frosting back in September. The blender versions with cream cheese also keep popping up, I’m guessing because a lot of people just don’t want to deal with folding. The yogurt cake lands somewhere in the middle of all of them, lighter than the cream cheese one and a lot more like real cake than the 2-ingredient version.

Why Did My Cloud Cake Crack or Sink?

First of all, a bit of sinking is totally normal, so don’t panic when you see it. The cake rises like a soufflé in the oven and usually settles by about a third as it cools down. A deep crack, a wet bottom or a rubbery center is a different story, though, and it nearly always comes back to one of the problems in this table.

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
Big crack across the top	Oven too hot or whites overwhipped	Bake at 320°F (160°C); stop at glossy, firm peaks
Sunk deep in the center	Underbaked or cooled too fast	Bake until it’s 160°F in the middle; cool in the oven 30 minutes
Wet, soggy bottom	Water leaked into the pan	Use two sheets of heavy-duty foil
Rubbery texture	Nonfat yogurt or overmixing	Use full-fat yogurt; fold gently
Dense, flat layer at the base	Whites folded too roughly	Fold in thirds; stop when just combined

Cloud Cake vs Japanese Cheesecake vs Angel Food Cake

People mix these three up constantly, and I get why, since they’re all basically “fluffy cakes that rise on whipped egg whites.” They really don’t eat the same, though.

Japanese cheesecake is the diva of the group. Cream cheese, butter, milk, a bit of flour, and a meringue that has to be exactly right or the top splits on you (that’s why half the recipes out there have you juggling two oven temperatures). Angel food cake is the total opposite personality. Whites, sugar, flour, zero fat, baked dry in a tube pan and then hung upside down to cool like a bat. Springy, sweet, a little chewy.

Cloud cake ends up right in between those two. You get a lot of the creaminess of the Japanese cheesecake, but because it’s yogurt instead of cream cheese it’s tangier, cheaper and honestly much easier to pull off. So if all the warnings about Japanese cheesecake have scared you off, I’d start here, since you get a similar jiggle for about half the stress.

Cloud Cake Flavors to Try Next

The plain lemon one is great, but after the second or third time you’ll want to mess with it. Fair warning from someone who likes to tinker: change one thing per bake, not four. Eggs, yogurt and sugar stay put. Otherwise when it flops you’ll have no clue which change did it.

Pumpkin Spice Cloud Cake

It’s November, so obviously. Pull 1/2 cup (120 g) of yogurt out of the recipe and put the same amount of canned pumpkin in its place. Lemon zest out, 1 1/2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice into the yolks. Pumpkin’s a soggier ingredient than yogurt, so the cake usually wants another 5 minutes or so, and the thermometer (160°F) gets the final say, not the timer. Leftover pumpkin in the can? Pancakes tomorrow.

Chocolate Cloud Cake

Trade 2 tablespoons (15 g) of the cornstarch for the same of unsweetened cocoa and sift them through together, because cocoa lumps are the worst. Lemon goes, vanilla stays. Cocoa weighs the batter down a little, so baby those whites when you fold. Raspberries on top, nothing else needed, done.

Matcha or Earl Grey Cloud Cake

Tea flavors are having a moment on TikTok right now, and the Earl Grey cloud cake from the Tous Les Jours bakery chain keeps turning up in “you have to try this” videos. At home you can sift 1 tablespoon of matcha in with the cornstarch, or for Earl Grey, grind the leaves from 2 tea bags really fine and mix them into the yolks. In both cases I’d skip the lemon juice, though a little zest still goes nicely with the Earl Grey.

Berry Swirl Cloud Cake

Once the batter is in the pan, drop about 3 tablespoons of seedless raspberry jam over the top in little spoonfuls and drag a knife through it a few times. The trick is to stop after two or three passes, because if you keep swirling you’ll knock out all the air you worked so hard to whip in.

Cloud Cake Pan Sizes and Baking Times

Cake for two, or cake for the whole extended family? These numbers will get you close. Ovens lie though (plenty of them run hotter or colder than the dial says), so the 160°F (71°C) thermometer reading is what you actually trust.

Pan	Recipe amount	Bake at 320°F (160°C)	Serves
6-inch (15 cm) springform	Half (2 eggs, 1 cup / 250 g yogurt)	40 to 45 minutes	4
8-inch (20 cm) springform	Full recipe	50 to 55 minutes	8
9-inch (23 cm) springform	Full recipe	40 to 45 minutes	8 to 10
Two 8-inch pans (for layers)	Double recipe	50 to 55 minutes, same rack	14 to 16

Doing layers? Both of them need a full night in the fridge before stacking, no shortcuts. And skip buttercream in the middle, it’s way too heavy and the bottom layer just gets flattened. Whipped cream and berries is the way.

A Simple Thanksgiving Plan for Cloud Cake

Holiday week tends to get chaotic, so here’s how I’d fit this cake in without it adding any stress.

Monday or Tuesday: pick up the yogurt and eggs, and glance at the date on the yogurt so you’re getting a fresh tub.
Wednesday afternoon: bake. The oven’s free, nobody’s fighting you for it yet.
Wednesday night: into the fridge, covered, and forget about it.
Thursday, after dinner: pop the springform, powdered sugar, berries, slice.

Want bakery-looking slices? Hot water, knife in, wipe, cut. Every slice. Yes it’s tedious and yes your aunt will ask what you’re doing, but the edges come out so clean.

Is Cloud Cake Healthy?

It’s lighter than most cakes, sure, but I wouldn’t call it health food. One slice comes in at around 165 calories with roughly 9 grams of protein, most of that from the eggs and yogurt, and since there’s no butter or flour it’s lower in fat than a typical slice of cheesecake. There’s still about 15 grams of sugar in each piece, though, so it’s very much a dessert.

Because there’s no wheat in it, it’s handy when someone at the table eats gluten-free, although you’ll want to check the labels on your cornstarch and vanilla, and if the guest has celiac disease, keep it well away from any flour on the counter. Making it dairy-free or egg-free isn’t really realistic, since those two ingredients basically are the cake.

How to Serve Cloud Cake

Slice of Greek yogurt cloud cake with a soft creamy center on a white plate

I think it’s best served cold, straight from the fridge, when it’s firm enough to slice cleanly. Dust the powdered sugar on right before it goes to the table, because if it sits too long the sugar soaks in and disappears. Berries, raspberry sauce, lemon curd, any of those. My weird favorite though is honey and a few flakes of salt on top. Sounds wrong. Isn’t.

Holiday tables get heavy fast, pie on pie on pie, so something this light is kind of a relief. For Thanksgiving I’d put it right next to these easy pumpkin cheesecake bars. Rich and spiced on one plate, bright and lemony on the other, and everybody grabs a bit of both.

How to Store Cloud Cake

Leftovers live in the fridge, covered, at 40°F (4°C) or below. It’s mostly eggs, remember, so 3 to 4 days is your limit, the same window USDA FSIS gives for cooked egg dishes. And don’t let it hang out on the counter past 2 hours, even if it’s a long dinner.

Freezing works better than you’d probably expect, to be honest. Slices wrapped one at a time, up to a month in the freezer, then a night in the fridge to thaw (counter thawing makes them weep). They come back a touch denser, more classic-cheesecake than cloud. Nobody complains.

Cloud Cake FAQ

What ingredients are in cloud cake?

For this yogurt version: Greek yogurt, eggs, sugar, cornstarch, lemon (juice and zest), vanilla and a pinch of salt. That’s the list. No flour, no butter, no baking powder, the whipped egg whites handle all the lifting. Other cloud cakes floating around online swap the yogurt for condensed milk or cream cheese.

Is cloud cake the same as angel food cake?

Nope, different animals. Angel food is whites plus sugar plus flour, baked dry in a tube pan, so you get that springy, bouncy sponge. Cloud cake has the yolks too, plus a pile of Greek yogurt, and it bakes sitting in water. Creamy, custardy, way more cheesecake than sponge.

What are the three ingredients in a cloud cake?

The viral 3-ingredient one is a 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk, 5 eggs (separated) and roughly 150 grams of cornstarch. It’s sweeter and spongier. This yogurt version trades some of that sweetness for tang and a much creamier middle.

Why is it called cloud cake?

Texture, mostly. Those whipped whites make it so light it barely pushes back when you cut it, a spoon sinks right into a cold slice, and the top tends to crack into these soft little hills. Squint and, yeah, clouds.

Do you have to use a water bath?

Technically no. But skip it and expect more cracks, browner edges and a spongier middle. The water is what keeps the heat soft and steamy, and that’s where the creaminess comes from. Really can’t be bothered? Slide a pan of hot water onto the rack below. Better than nothing.

How do I know when cloud cake is done?

Puffed, pale gold on top, and just a small jiggle in the very center when you tap the pan. Don’t trust your eyes? Fair. Poke an instant-read thermometer into the middle and look for 160°F (71°C), the safe temperature for egg dishes.

Why does cloud cake shrink after baking?

All that air in the whites puffs up in the heat and shrinks back as it cools. Physics, basically, so some sinking is guaranteed. Cooling it slowly in the turned-off oven, door cracked, keeps the drop to about a third instead of a crater.

Can I make cloud cake ahead of time?

You kind of have to. Three hours in the fridge is the bare minimum to set it, and overnight is noticeably better, both for slicing and taste. Bake it the day before, cover it, and save the sugar and fruit for right before it goes out.

Can I make cloud cake without cornstarch?

Grab potato starch, same amount, and you’ll barely tell. Flour also works at the same weight, it’s just denser and obviously not flourless anymore. Leaving starch out altogether? Don’t. You’ll get a wet, pudding-ish thing that collapses the second a knife touches it.

Can I use regular yogurt instead of Greek yogurt?

Only after straining. Regular yogurt is full of extra water and the cake just won’t set with it. Coffee filter in a sieve, yogurt in, fridge for about 2 hours. Once it’s Greek-yogurt thick, measure your 2 cups (500 g) and carry on.

OohRecipe Secret: Honestly, this cake is more about patience than skill. Take the eggs and yogurt out about 30 minutes ahead so they’re cool rather than fridge-cold, because the whites fold in much more easily that way and don’t deflate as much. Bake it low in the water bath, let it cool in the oven, and then comes the hard part, which is waiting overnight before you cut into it. That wait is really what turns it into a cloud.

Try Cloud Cake This Week

Make it on a quiet weeknight and you’ve got dessert sorted for the next day. If you give it a try, leave a star rating in the recipe card and let me know in the comments what you topped yours with, since other bakers really do read those before they start. Save it to Pinterest for the holidays too, and if soft, light cakes are your thing, the lemon tres leches cake or this honey cake with whipped cream frosting would be a good next bake.

Cloud Cake (Fluffy Greek Yogurt Cake, No Flour)

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