Need a last-minute cake? These 3 Twin Cities bakeries can help

Sometimes you just need cake. There are the traditional occasions — birthdays, anniversaries, retirements, breakups — or sometimes it’s just a really rotten Tuesday that could use a little turning around.

Whether you’re a last-minute party planner or looking for a quick pick-me-up from a local shop, keep these three makers’ names close at hand. Their cases are stocked with artful confections that can be ordered ahead — one even ships nationwide — or picked up right now.

Cafe Latte has been a part of St. Paul’s Grand Avenue neighborhood for 40 years, and cakes have been a major part of its success. That cornerstone of sweet service hasn’t changed. Every day there is a selection of their iconic cakes available for ordering ahead online or waiting to be swooped up from the back pastry case. All are baked fresh on-site with crowd-pleasing recipes like the double chocolate, tres leches, turtle cake, cheesecakes and more. The daily selection includes full-sized cakes ($60), “snack cakes” ($36) that feed four to six revelers, or slices ($7.50) that are available starting at noon. (There are still usually a few in stock all the way until the restaurant closes at 10 p.m.) Plus, they sell candles right at the cash register.

850 Grand Av., St. Paul, cafelatte.com

When you need a treat to bring to book club, this one is for you. Nadia Cakes proprietor Abby Jimenez is the bestselling author of a shelf’s worth of light and breezy summer reads, and just like the dazzling whole cakes in the case at her two Minnesota cupcake shop, her books are all available for purchase — signed.

Jimenez’s latest, “Say You’ll Remember Me,” even has a signature cupcake counterpart (blue-dyed guava cake with cream cheese frosting). If you plan ahead, you can order the whole-cake version.

But if you’re a cake procrastinator like we are, the ready-to-go flavors here are always rotating. We grabbed this Andes-inspired chocolate mint dream for $40. (And maybe a romance novel or two.)

Just surviving road construction season without succumbing to road rage seems reason enough to celebrate with the appropriately named Nicollet Avenue Pothole ice cream cake from one of the three Minneapolis Sebastian Joe’s. While technically not a bakery, all of the locations do stock cakes of the ice cream variety — in Pothole, Oreo and raspberry chocolate chip flavors — in the freezer case every day in two sizes, 6-inch ($33) and 8-inch ($50). Pick them up in store or, in select areas, get them delivered.

1007 W. Franklin Av.; 4321 Upton Av. S.; 4301 Nicollet Av. S., Mpls., sebastianjoesicecream.com