Drink Pairings - Partially cut red velvet and pumpkin cake rolls with 2 white cups and saucers filled with coffee and tea. Spoons, lemons, and cinnamon sticks for garnish on wooden tabletop.

What to Drink with Dessert? Classic Pairings You’ll Adore!

We’ve compiled a list of beverages for you and your guests to enjoy with our cake rolls. These pairings are an excellent way to take your dessert game to the next level and make your gathering unique.

No occasion is complete without a delicious cake roll for dessert. However, have you ever wondered what beverage to serve alongside your cake roll? Or questioned what drink would be a perfect complement to these sweet treats?

Finding the right beverage to pair with your dessert isn’t as tricky as it sounds. For the most part, you’re trying to match the taste of the drink to the dessert while looking for complementary or contrasting flavor profiles. To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of beverages for you and your guests to enjoy with a slice of our cake rolls. These drink pairings are an excellent way to take your dessert game to the next level and make your gathering unique.

Balance the Flavors in a Carrot Cake

Drink pairings - Partially sliced carrot cake roll with carrot garnish and knife on cutting board with coffee in white cup on saucer

Our Carrot Cake Cake Roll is a classic that has real carrots mixed into the cake and contains a series of complementary spices. You can go one of two ways when trying to find the right drink pairings for this treat.

Coffee

If you want to balance out the sweetness of the cake, coffee is a great choice. A smooth, full-bodied coffee is perfect because it has a deeper, darker taste that will complement the creaminess of this dessert. The tart cream cheese filling in our cake roll makes for an indulgent treat when paired with the bitter taste of coffee.

Chai Tea

The robust flavor in many black teas is well suited to pairing with a bolder dessert. If you want to bring out the spices in our Carrot Cake Cake Roll, serve it with a chai tea. Whenever cinnamon is featured in a dessert, chai tea is a good choice to pair it with because you’re pairing like with like. The spices in the chai tea naturally complement the ones in the dessert. The spices in chai tea also balance out any sweetness in the cake giving you an excellent combination.

Match the Intensity in Chocolate Cake Rolls

Drink pairings - Partially cut chocolate cake roll with chocolate pieces in cup next to cutting board and a clear cup and saucer filled with tea and mint for garnish

This Chocolate Crème Cake Roll is moist and decadent. It has such a strong, sweet flavor that it can be hard to find the right drink to accompany it. Here’s what we recommend serving to give this treat a boost.

Cranberry or Pomegranate Juice

To offset the super sweet and indulgent taste of the chocolate, you should pair it with something tart like cranberry or pomegranate juice. Chocolate cakes need something to cut through that richness, and these fruit juices do it very well and don’t overwhelm the dessert.

Peppermint Tea

Chocolate and peppermint are a classic pairing. Peppermint tea retains that distinctive mint flavor you love without tasting artificial. The refreshing mint perfectly balances the richness of the chocolate to create the perfect flavor combination.

Complement the Citrus in a Lemon Cake Roll

Drink pairings - Partially cut lemon cake roll on cutting board with knife and lemons for garnish. White cup and saucer filled with tea next to it.

The Lemon Cake Roll is both sweet and tangy which opens it up to a variety of flavor combinations. It may seem strange, but the flavor that best goes with a lemon cake is…lemon! Drink pairings that can bring out that distinct citrus flavor are always going to be a winner.

Earl Gray Tea

Earl Gray isn’t like other teas. This British drink relies on bergamot oil to create the iconic citrus and floral flavor profile. The citrus in the tea and the citrus in the lemon cake is what makes this pairing work so well. It’s a balanced combination that emphasizes the distinctive fruit flavor we love in a lemon dessert.

Sparkling Cider

A lemon cake can often be very sweet, even with the tartness of the lemon. Sparkling Cider is a crisp, fruit-based drink that will help to contrast against that sweetness and cleanse your palate. It’s the perfect beverage to accompany any light, fresh, and fruity dessert.

Bring out the Flavor in our Pumpkin Cake Roll

Drink pairings - Partially cut pumpkin cake roll on cutting board with knife and a cup of cinnamon sticks next to it along with a clear mug of cider with cinnamon sticks inside.

Pumpkin is the quintessential flavor of fall; people wait all year to get their hands on their favorite pumpkin-flavored treats, such as our Pumpkin Cake Roll. That means you don’t want to serve a drink that would mask this great, seasonal flavor. Instead, choose drink pairings that couple nicely with both the cake and the season.

Warm Apple Cider

Serve apple cider with a dessert that naturally complements apples. A treat containing cinnamon, like our Pumpkin Cake Roll, is the perfect choice. Also, the tart taste of the apples wonderfully offsets the sweet flavor of pumpkin. It’s a fantastic combination that will highlight the delicate balance of flavors in both these fall classics.

Espresso

Espresso has a big, bold coffee flavor. Typically, it would overpower the taste in any dessert you serve it with which is why we recommend pairing espresso with something just as intense. The robust flavor of the coffee pairs nicely with the spicy, sweet flavor of pumpkin that we all love. It’s a fantastic and distinct combination.

Emphasize the Chocolate in a Red Velvet Cake Roll

Partially cut red velvet cake roll with chocolate shavings as garnish on cutitng board with knife. Mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows next to it.

Our Red Velvet Cake Roll is similar to chocolate cake as it is made with hints of cocoa, though it tends to be more acidic in taste. The best drinks for this dessert will bring out the subtle chocolate flavor notes while balancing the tanginess from the cream cheese filling.

Hot Chocolate

The Red Velvet Cake Roll boasts a flavor that is all its own, so a dairy-based dessert, like hot chocolate, will help offset the acidity in this dessert. The extra hint of cocoa from the hot chocolate creates a perfect balance between tartness and sweetness while also cleansing the palate.

White Chocolate Mocha

A mocha is a blend of cappuccino and hot chocolate. It contains espresso, warm milk, and a sweet, chocolatey twist. Naturally, this means that one of the best food pairings for a mocha is a chocolate-based dessert. The sweetness of the white chocolate, specifically, will counteract any acidity coming from the cream cheese. Plus, you can never go wrong with a coffee and chocolate pairing.

A Fruity Combination for this Strawberry Cheesecake Cake Roll

Strawberry Cheesecake Cake Roll on cutting board with real strawberries next to it. It's next to a glass of lemonade.

Fruit-based cakes, like our Strawberry Cheesecake Cake Roll, are the most popular of all cake flavors. They’re also difficult to find drink pairings for. Something too strong would overpower the fruitiness and something too bold wouldn’t complement the light, airy texture of the cake. These are the drinks we recommend accompanying this fruit-flavored dessert.

White Tea

Unlike black teas, which would be too strong, white teas are much more compatible with fruity cakes. White teas have flowery and fruity notes that add to the flavor of a strawberry cake instead of taking away from it.

Lemonade

Lemonade is the ideal companion to a fresh and fruity treat. The sweetness of the strawberry cake and the bright acidity of the lemonade play well together. It perfectly balances sour and sweet to bring an overall impressive flavor. That’s why strawberry and lemonade is such a classic combination.

We hope you get a chance to try some of these unique and amazing drink pairings and that it inspires you to come up with some of your own. Remember, creating your pairings should never become a chore. It’s a fun opportunity to play with different flavors and get creative.

Did you give this a try? We want to see! Tag @dutch.apron on Instagram or @dutchapron on Facebook.

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