Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations ..Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations ..
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Chocolate cake CAKE01
Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate and which share features with desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.
The most common ingredients include flour, sugar, eggs, fat (such as butter, oil, or margarine), a liquid, and a leavening agent, such as baking soda or baking powder. Common additional ingredients include dried, candied, or fresh fruit, nuts, cocoa, and extracts such as vanilla, with numerous substitutions for the primary ingredients. Cakes can also be filled with fruit preserves, nuts, or dessert sauces (like custard, jelly, cooked fruit, whipped cream, or syrups),[1] iced with buttercream or other icings, and decorated with marzipan, piped borders, or candied fruit.
Cake is often served as a celebratory dish on ceremonial occasions, such as weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays. There are countless cake recipes; some are bread-like, some are rich and elaborate, and many are centuries old. Cake making is no longer a complicated procedure; while at one time considerable went into cake making (particularly the whisking of egg foams), baking equipment and directions have been simplified so that even the most amateur of cooks may bake a cake.
By Scheinwerfermann – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4179330History
The term “cake” has a long history. The word itself is of Viking origin, from the Old Norse word “kaka”.[2]
The ancient Greeks called cake πλακοῦς (plakous), which was derived from the word for “flat”, πλακόεις (plakoeis). It was baked using flour mixed with eggs, milk, nuts, and honey. They also had a cake called , which was a flat, heavy cake. During the Roman period, the name for cake became “placenta”, which was derived from the Greek term. A placenta was baked on a pastry base or inside a pastry case.[3]
The Greeks invented beer as a , frying fritters in olive oil, and cheesecakes using goat’s milk.[4] In ancient Rome, the basic bread dough was sometimes enriched with butter, eggs, and honey, which produced a sweet and cake-like baked good.[5] The Latin poet Ovid refers to his and his brother’s birthday party and cake in his first book of exile.[6]
Early cakes in England were also essentially bread: the most obvious differences between a “cake” and “bread” were the round, flat shape of the cakes and the cooking method, which turned cakes over once while cooking, while bread was left upright throughout the baking process.[5]
Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain.[7]
Ever since boxed cake mix has become a staple of supermarkets, it is often complemented with frosting in a can.[citation needed]
Varieties cake01
Main article: List of cakes
Cakes are broadly divided into several categories, based primarily on ingredients and mixing techniques. There are about hundreds of different types of cakes, but there are two broad categories, that culinary divide them into: shortened, and cakes. Unshortened cakes contain no fat while shortened cakes do. These types may be combined in baking.
Although clear examples of the difference between cake and bread are easy to find, the precise classification has always been elusive.[5]
Butter cakes are made from creamed butter, sugar,
History
The term “cake” has a long history. The word itself is of Viking origin, from the Old Norse word “kaka”.[2]
The ancient Greeks called cake πλακοῦς (plakous), which was derived from the word for “flat”, πλακόεις (plakoeis). It was baked using flour mixed with eggs, milk, nuts, and honey. They also had a cake called , which was a flat, heavy cake. During the Roman period, the name for cake became “placenta”, which was derived from the Greek term. A placenta was baked on a pastry base or inside a pastry case.[3]
The Greeks invented beer as a , frying fritters in olive oil, and cheesecakes using goat’s milk.[4] In ancient Rome, the basic bread dough was sometimes enriched with butter, eggs, and honey, which produced a sweet and cake-like baked good.[5] The Latin poet Ovid refers to his and his brother’s birthday party and cake in his first book of exile.[6]
Early cakes in England were also essentially bread: the most obvious differences between a “cake” and “bread” were the round, flat shape of the cakes and the cooking method, which turned cakes over once while cooking, while bread was left upright throughout the baking process.[5]
Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain.[7]
During the Great Depression, there was a surplus of molasses and the need to provide easily made food to millions of economically depressed people in the United States.[8] One company patented a cake-bread mix to deal with this economic situation and thereby established the first line of cake in a box. In doing so, cake, as it is known today, became a mass-produced good rather than a home- or bakery-made specialty.
Later, during the post-war boom, other American companies (notably General Mills) developed this idea further, marketing cake mix on the principle of convenience, especially to housewives. When sales dropped heavily in the 1950s, marketers discovered that baking cakes, once a task at which housewives could exercise skill and creativity, had become dispiriting.
This was a period in American ideological history when women, retired from the war-time force, were confined to the domestic sphere while still exposed to the blossoming consumerism in the US.[9] This inspired  to find a solution to the cake mix problem in the frosting.[10] Since making the cake was so simple, housewives and other in-home cake makers could expend their creative energy on cake decorating inspired by, among other things, photographs in magazines of elaborately decorated cakes.
Ever since boxed cake mix has become a staple of supermarkets, it is often complemented with frosting in a can.[citation needed]
Varieties
Main article: List of cakes
Cakes are broadly divided into several categories, based primarily on ingredients and mixing techniques. There are about hundreds of different types of cakes, but there are two broad categories, that culinary divide them into: shortened, and cakes. Unshortened cakes contain no fat while shortened cakes do. These types may be combined in baking.
Although clear examples of the difference between cake and bread are easy to find, the precise classification has always been elusive.[5]
Butter cake
Main article: Butter cake
Butter cakes are made from creamed butter, sugar,, sugar, eggs, and flour. They rely on the combination of butter and sugar beaten for an extended time to incorporate air into the batter.[11] A classic pound cake is made with a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. Another type of butter cake that takes its name from the proportion of ingredients used is 1-2-3-4 cake: 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, and 4 eggs.[12] According to Beth Tartan, this cake was one of the most common among the American pioneers who settled North Carolina.[13]
Baking powder is in many butter cakes, such as Victoria sponge.[14] The ingredients are sometimes mixed without creaming the butter, using recipes for simple and quick cakes.[citation needed]
Sponge cake
Main article: Sponge cake
Sponge cakes (or foam cakes) are made from whipped eggs, sugar, and flour. Traditional sponge cakes are leavened only with eggs. They rely primarily on trapped air in a protein matrix (generally beaten eggs) to provide leavening, sometimes with a bit of baking powder or other chemical leaven added. Egg-leavened sponge cakes are thought to be the oldest cakes made without yeast.
Angel food cake is a white cake that uses only the whites of the eggs and is traditionally baked in a tube pan. The is a sponge cake that includes clarified butter. Highly decorated sponge cakes with lavish toppings are sometimes called gateau, the French word for cake. Chiffon cakes are sponge cakes with vegetable oil, which adds moistness.[15]
Chocolate cake
Main article: Chocolate cake
Chocolate cakes are butter cakes, sponge cakes, or other cakes with melted chocolate or cocoa powder.[16] German chocolate cake is a variety of chocolate cake.
Coffee cake
Main article: Coffee cake (American)
Coffee cake is generally thought of as a cake to serve with coffee or tea at breakfast or a coffee break. Some types use yeast as a leavening agent, while others use baking soda or baking powder. These cakes often have a crumb topping called streusel or a light glaze drizzle.
Flourless cake
Baked flourless cakes include clementine cakes, baked cheesecakes, and flourless chocolate cakes.
Layer cakes
Main article: Layer cake
Layer cakes are cakes made with layers of sponge or butter cake filled with cream, jam, or other filling to hold the layers together.
One-egg cake
One-egg cakes are made with one egg. They can be made with butter[17] or vegetable shortening.[18] One egg cake was an economical recipe when using two eggs for each cake was too costly.[19]
Comparison with bread
Although clear examples of the difference between cake and bread are easy to find, the precise classification has always been elusive.[5] For example, banana bread may be properly considered either a quick bread or a cake. Yeast cakes are the oldest and are very similar to yeast bread. Such cakes are often very traditional in form and include such pastries as babka.
Special-purpose cakes
Cakes may be classified according to the occasion for which they are intended. For example, wedding cakes, birthday cakes, cakes for first communion, Christmas cakes, Halloween cakes, and Passover (a type of sponge cake sometimes made with matzo meal) are all identified primarily according to the celebration they are intended to accompany. The cutting of a wedding cake constitutes a social ceremony in some cultures. The Ancient Roman marriage ritual of  originated in the sharing of a cake.
Particular types of cake may be associated with particular festivals, such as  or chocolate log (at Christmas), babka and cake (at Easter), or mooncake. There has been a long tradition of decorating an iced cake at Christmas time; other cakes associated with Christmas include chocolate log and mince pies.
A Lancashire Courting Cake is a fruit-filled cake baked by a fiancée for her betrothed. The cake has been described as “somewhere between a firm sponge – with a greater proportion of flour to fat and eggs than a Victoria sponge cake – and a shortbread base and was proof of the bride-to-be’s baking skills”. Traditionally it is a two-layer cake filled and topped with strawberries or raspberries and whipped cream.[20]
A decorated birthday cake
A Halloween cake shaped like a pumpkin