100 Fun Facts About Cake

The English word 'cake' comes from kaka, a word in which language?

Old Norse kaka gave English 'cake' in the 13th century; the cakes it named were closer to sweetened bread, and round iced cakes arrived only in the 17th century.

Chiffon cake, credited to insurance salesman Harry Baker in 1927, owed its lightness to which then-secret ingredient?

Vegetable oil took the place of butter in Baker's recipe; he guarded the secret for two decades while baking for Hollywood stars, then sold it to a flour company that published it in 1948.

A famous early record of a birthday cake with one candle per year comes from a 1746 party in which country?

Germany: at Count Zinzendorf's 1746 birthday festival at Marienborn, the cake was as large as any oven could bake, with a hole cut for each year of his age and a candle stuck in every one.

By tradition, a birthday wish comes true only if what happens?

All candles go out in one breath, or the wish fails: the rule took hold only in the 20th century, and an 1881 Swiss account still had the birthday child blow them out one at a time.

A popular myth says which white icing got its name from Queen Victoria's 1840 wedding cake?

Royal icing was already named in Borella's Court and Country Confectioner of 1770, seventy years before Victoria's wedding, so the story that her cake christened it is a myth.

The first completely edible tiered wedding cake was made for the 1882 wedding of which royal?

Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, married in 1882; his cake was the first tiered wedding cake built entirely of edible layers instead of resting on non-edible supports.

Despite its name, German chocolate cake comes from which country?

The United States: the cake is named after Samuel German, who created a sweet baking chocolate for Baker's of Boston; a 1957 Dallas newspaper recipe for 'German's Chocolate Cake' made it a national hit.

The phrase 'Let them eat cake' appears in the 1760s writings of which philosopher?

Rousseau's Confessions, written in the 1760s, gives the line to a 'great princess'; Marie Antoinette was then a child in Austria who had not yet set foot in France.

The original French of 'Let them eat cake' actually refers to which food?

Brioche, enriched with butter and eggs, was a luxury; there is no evidence Marie Antoinette ever said the line.

Which spirit is the essential flavouring in an authentic Black Forest gateau?

Kirsch, a clear cherry spirit (Kirschwasser), soaks the layers of an authentic Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte; the official baking guidelines of its homeland define the cake by it, so a version without kirsch cannot use the name.

Sachertorte, the Viennese chocolate cake, is layered with which jam?

Apricot jam is spread between the chocolate sponge layers and under the glaze; Franz Sacher is said to have created the torte in 1832 as a 16-year-old apprentice for Prince Metternich.

Which Viennese pastry shop fought the Hotel Sacher for decades over the 'original' Sachertorte?

Demel fought the Hotel Sacher through the courts until 1963 over the 'Original Sacher-Torte' name; the case even argued over whether the cake should be sliced and filled with jam or left as a single layer.

Battenberg cake, with its pink-and-yellow chequered cross-section, is wrapped in what?

Marzipan wraps the pink-and-yellow chequered sponge; the cake is reportedly named for the 1884 marriage of Queen Victoria's granddaughter to Prince Louis of Battenberg.

The Victoria sponge became possible after Alfred Bird created which product in 1843?

Baking powder let bakers add butter and still get a high rise; Bird devised it so his wife Elizabeth, who could not eat yeast, could have bread, six years after making her an egg-free custard.

An urban legend has which New York hotel charging a diner $100 for its red velvet cake recipe?

The Waldorf-Astoria is the hotel in the '$100 cake' legend that helped make red velvet famous; it likes to take credit for the cake, though where the recipe began is unknown.

Devil's food cake gets its reddish-mahogany colour from cocoa reacting with what?

Baking soda reacts with the acids in natural cocoa to give devil's food cake its reddish-mahogany tint; the name is thought to play on the light angel food cake of the same era.

Angel food cake is made with eggs in which form?

Whites only: with no yolks, butter or raising agent, the cake rises on air whipped into the egg whites and is cooled hanging upside down in its tube pan.

Lord Lamington, the lamington's reputed namesake, governed which Australian state?

Queensland: Lord Lamington governed from 1896 to 1901; one story has his Government House kitchen inventing the cake to use up stale sponge, though who first made it is disputed.

The pavlova, disputed between Australia and New Zealand, is named after a Russian what?

Ballerina Anna Pavlova toured Australia and New Zealand in the 1920s, and each country claims the meringue dessert was created in her honour.

Kouign-amann, a caramelised butter-and-sugar layered cake, comes from which French region?

Brittany: the name is Breton for 'butter cake', and Douarnenez dates its recipe of bread dough, butter and sugar to about 1860, though the town of Scaër has a rival claim to the invention.

Baumkuchen, whose name means 'tree cake', is baked how?

In layers on a rotating spit: each brushed-on coat of batter bakes to a golden line, so a slice shows rings like a tree trunk; prisoner of war Karl Juchheim first sold it in Japan in 1919.

A king cake is traditionally associated with which Christian feast?

Epiphany, 6 January, is king cake day: whoever finds the hidden fève, often a tiny baby figure, is crowned king for the day and buys the next cake.

Panettone, the Christmas sweet bread, is associated with which Italian city?

Milan is panettone's home; in one legend a scullery boy named Toni saves Duke Ludovico Sforza's Christmas banquet with a loaf of his own after the cook burns the dessert, hence 'pan de Toni'.

Stollen, the fruit bread dusted with icing sugar, is the Christmas speciality of which city?

Dresden bakers had to make stollen without butter during the Advent fast until Pope Innocent VIII's 'Butter Letter' of the early 1490s eased the ban; the city's Christmas market, the Striezelmarkt, is named after the loaf.

Simnel cake, familiar at Easter, was the traditional gift servants took home on which day?

Mothering Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent, was when apprentices and servants got a day off to visit their mother church and their families, and a simnel cake was the customary gift.

An ancient Roman cake recipe mixed raisins, pine nuts and which seeds into barley?

Pomegranate seeds, with pine nuts and raisins stirred into barley mash, make up the earliest Roman fruitcake-like recipe; medieval cooks later added honey, spices and preserved fruit.

Which dessert is reputed to have been served to athletes at the first Olympic Games in 776 BC?

Cheesecake, by repute, fed the athletes of the first Olympics; the Roman statesman Cato the Elder later wrote down a recipe for libum, a cheese cake baked on bay leaves as an offering to the gods.

American cream cheese was developed in 1872 by a dairyman trying to copy which French cheese?

Neufchâtel was what William Lawrence of Chester, New York, set out to make; his richer result was sold from 1880 as 'Philadelphia', a name borrowed from a city famed for its dairies, though the cheese came from New York.

Carrot cake's popularity in Britain was revived by rationing during which conflict?

World War II: with sugar rationed, Britain's Ministry of Food promoted carrots as a sweetener, reviving carrot cake; medieval cooks had used carrots the same way in puddings.

A 1925 recipe contest that drew 2,500 pineapple upside-down cakes was run by the Hawaiian company later named what?

Dole, then the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, asked magazine readers for pineapple recipes and got 2,500 for upside-down cake alone; the cake was clearly not new, but the publicity made it a national favourite.

One of the earliest printed pound cake recipes appears in a 1747 cookbook by which English writer?

Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) gives 'To make a Pound Cake'; she wrote in plain language so that servants could follow it, and it stayed in print into the 19th century.

Which cookware company trademarked the name 'Bundt' and made the fluted pans from cast aluminium?

Nordic Ware's H. David Dalquist cast the first aluminium Bundt pans in 1950 after women from a Minneapolis Hadassah chapter asked for a lighter version of the heavy cast-iron Gugelhupf moulds used in Europe.

Which baking brand is named after a real person who wrote the restaurant guide Adventures in Good Eating?

Duncan Hines, a travelling salesman, kept a list of the best places he ate and sent it to friends with his Christmas cards; it grew into a famous guidebook, and his name went on cake mixes only years later.

Betty Crocker was invented in 1921 to sign replies to customers of a company that became which firm?

General Mills was formed in 1928 around the Washburn-Crosby Company, the flour miller whose staff created Betty Crocker after a jigsaw-puzzle promotion brought hundreds of baking questions; 'Crocker' honoured a company director.

Which New York bakery, seen in Sex and the City, helped start the 2000s cupcake craze?

Magnolia Bakery opened in 1996 and first made cupcakes to use up leftover cake batter; after the TV cameo, queues formed outside and rival cupcake shops sprang up.

The Great British Bake Off is renamed in the US because 'Bake-Off' is trademarked by whom?

Pillsbury's Bake-Off contest, launched in 1949, gave the company the US trademark, so the series airs there as The Great British Baking Show.

Which channel aired The Great British Bake Off for four series before its promotion to BBC One?

BBC Two aired the first four series from August 2010 before the move to BBC One in 2014; in 2016 the makers took the show to Channel 4, which outbid the BBC.

Cake Boss follows Carlo's Bake Shop, a family business in which city in New Jersey?

Hoboken is home to Carlo's Bake Shop, which Buddy Valastro's father bought in 1964; Buddy started work there at 11 and took over the family business at 17 when his father died.

The cakewalk dance took its name from what?

Contests where a cake was the prize: enslaved people on Southern plantations held strutting 'prize walks', by some accounts sly parodies of their owners' formal dances, and the best couple won the cake.

The name of the Italian dessert tiramisu translates as what?

'Pick me up' is the literal Italian, tira-mi-sù; for all its fame the recipe is in no cookbook before the 1960s, and a Treviso restaurant, Le Beccherie, says it invented the dessert in 1969.

The Twinkie's original 1930 filling was what flavour?

Banana cream filled the first Twinkies until wartime shortages of the fruit forced a switch to vanilla, and the substitute proved so popular that it stayed.

James Dewar invented Twinkies in 1930 to use machines idle when which fruit was out of season?

Strawberries were in season for only about six weeks, leaving the shortcake pans idle, so Dewar used them for a cream-filled cake sold all year; he said the name came from a billboard for 'Twinkle Toe Shoes'.

Boston cream pie, actually a cake, is credited to a chef at which Boston hotel?

The Parker House hotel's chef, M. Sanzian, reportedly created it for the hotel's opening in 1856, when cakes and pies were baked in the same tins.

In a 1991 UK tax tribunal, McVitie's argued Jaffa Cakes were cakes partly because cakes do what as they go stale?

Cakes go hard as they stale while biscuits go soft, McVitie's argued; the tribunal weighed that alongside ingredients, size and packaging and ruled Jaffa Cakes to be cakes, which kept them zero-rated for VAT.

Jaffa Cakes, introduced in 1927, are named after what?

A variety of orange: the Jaffa orange gave the 1927 McVitie's cake its name and its tangy centre; the company never trademarked the name, so rivals sell their own 'Jaffa Cakes'.

Mooncakes are traditionally eaten during which Chinese celebration?

Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month; a folk tale has rebels against Mongol rule hiding messages inside mooncakes to plan their uprising.

Which classic sponge rises on air beaten into eggs and sugar alone, with no chemical raising agent?

Genoise takes its lift from eggs and sugar whisked over warm water until the mixture falls in ribbons, with flour and sometimes melted butter folded in; French pâtissiers build many layered cakes on it.

Which nut gives a French financier, baked in small rectangular moulds, its flavour?

Almond flour and browned butter give the financier its flavour; tradition says its gold-bar shape pleased Paris stockbrokers, who could eat one without dirtying their fingers.

The famous panettone brand Motta was started by Angelo Motta in which year?

1919: Angelo Motta opened his Milan bakery that year and later gave panettone its tall dome by letting the dough rise three times; the first printed recipe had appeared in an 1853 Milanese cookbook.

Lamingtons are squares of sponge dipped in chocolate and then rolled in what?

Coconut, the desiccated kind, coats the chocolate-dipped sponge; a 2014 April Fools' story in Guardian Australia claimed the cake began as a New Zealand 'Wellington', and other outlets repeated the hoax as fact.

Which fugitive was caught partly because his manifesto reversed the proverb about having cake and eating it?

The Unabomber wrote the proverb in its older order, eat first and have second, and an FBI linguist matched that quirk to a letter Ted Kaczynski had sent his mother.

Which Anglo-Saxon king, according to legend, was scolded by a peasant woman for letting her cakes burn?

Alfred the Great was sheltering in the Somerset Levels when, the story goes, worries about his kingdom distracted him and the woman, unaware who he was, told him off.

Which 2007 puzzle video game has an AI promise the player cake for finishing every test chamber?

Portal has the computer GLaDOS dangle the cake in front of its heroine Chell, who must escape each chamber with a gun that opens linked doorways in the walls.

Which small shell-shaped French sponge cake sets off a flood of childhood memories in Marcel Proust's great novel?

Madeleine crumbs dipped in tea bring the narrator's childhood rushing back, which is why a memory set off by a taste or smell is now called Proustian.

Soul cakes, handed to children who went door to door in medieval Britain, are seen as a forerunner of which custom?

Trick-or-treating echoes the old practice of souling, in which children and the poor were given the small cakes around Halloween in return for praying for the givers' dead relatives.

What tiny object is traditionally hidden inside a New Orleans king cake for one lucky guest to find?

A plastic baby, standing for the infant Jesus, is tucked into the cake, and whoever gets the slice that holds it is promised luck and prosperity.

English Madeira cake, a firm butter sponge eaten at teatime, takes its name from what once served alongside it?

A fortified wine from the Madeira islands was fashionable in England in the mid-1800s and was often poured with a slice, so the cake itself has no roots on the islands.

Which flavour pairing did Harry and Meghan choose for the layered cake at their 2018 Windsor wedding?

Lemon and elderflower was the choice, made by the London cake designer Claire Ptak, who was picked two months before the ceremony and decorated it with peonies.

In the 1989 film Steel Magnolias, the red velvet groom's cake is famously shaped like which animal?

An armadillo is the shape of the film's cake, a nod to a custom that began in Victorian Britain but is now seen mostly at weddings in the American South.

Which Latin American sponge cake is soaked after baking in sweetened dairy yet keeps a light, airy texture?

Tres leches takes its name from its three milks, usually evaporated, condensed and whole, and the many air bubbles in the sponge stop it from turning soggy.

What do Americans usually call the jam-filled spiral of sponge cake that the British name after Switzerland?

Jelly roll is the American name, though the cake is not thought to be Swiss at all and probably began elsewhere in Central Europe during the nineteenth century.

The French Christmas cake called bûche de Noël is shaped, iced and decorated to look like what?

A log is the model, and the cake is often served with one end cut off and set on top or at the side so that it resembles a sawn-off branch.

Which mixing method, the first step of many cake recipes, beats butter and sugar together until light and fluffy?

Creaming locks tiny air bubbles into the fat, and those bubbles expand in the oven, so the beating itself helps the sponge to rise.

Which Netflix baking competition, hosted by Nicole Byer, asks amateur bakers with poor skills to copy elaborate cakes?

Nailed It!'s three contestants chase a $10,000 award in each episode, judged by Byer and the pastry chef Jacques Torres.

Which cake, created in Jamaica and named after its national bird, became Southern Living's most requested recipe?

Hummingbird cake is known at home as doctor bird cake, and it reached American kitchens in 1968 through press kits sent out by the island's tourist board.

Alabama's bourbon-laced Lane cake is baked by a neighbour, Miss Maudie, in which classic Southern novel?

To Kill a Mockingbird has Miss Maudie give the cake as a welcome gift to Aunt Alexandra, and in 2016 Alabama voted it the official state cake.

Which Dickens novel features Miss Havisham, who leaves her wedding cake uneaten on the table after being jilted?

Great Expectations shows her never taking off the wedding dress and wearing only one shoe, exactly as she was when the news of her betrayal arrived.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, what happens to Alice when she eats a cake marked with an instruction?

She grows enormous, moments after a drink from a labelled bottle had shrunk her small enough to fit through a tiny door.

Which French wedding cake is a tall cone of cream-filled choux puffs bound with threads of caramel?

Croquembouche means something that crunches in the mouth, and in France and Italy the tower is also served at baptisms and First Communions.

Dundee cake, a rich fruit cake first mass-produced by a marmalade company, is a traditional bake of which country?

Scotland's Dundee cake was turned out in bulk by Keiller's, the city's marmalade firm, which is also said to have given the cake its name.

Which traditional Sicilian cake fills liqueur-moistened sponge with sweetened ricotta cheese and candied fruit?

Cassata is believed to date from tenth-century Palermo, when the island was an emirate, and it shares its ricotta filling with cannoli.

The French name of petits fours, the bite-sized iced cakes served after a meal, literally means what?

Small oven is usually explained as the name for a stone oven cooling after the bread came out, when its fading heat was gentle enough for delicate little cakes.

Nian gao, a sticky cake made from glutinous rice flour, is most popular during which annual celebration?

Chinese New Year is its season because the cake's name sounds identical to a phrase meaning higher year, a wish for promotion and prosperity.

Which singer fronted DNCE on the band's 2015 debut single, Cake by the Ocean?

Joe Jonas also co-wrote the song with Justin Tranter and its producers Mattman & Robin, and it was the first single the group ever released.

Ube, which gives a popular Filipino sponge cake its vivid violet colour, is a type of what?

Yam of a naturally purple kind is mashed into a paste called ube halaya, which is added to an otherwise ordinary Filipino sponge batter.

Which cake did insurance salesman Harry Baker keep secret for 20 years before selling the recipe to General Mills?

Chiffon cake swaps butter for vegetable oil, which keeps it moist, and a 1948 Betty Crocker pamphlet carried Baker's recipe into American homes.

Funnel cake, a fairground treat brought to America by the Pennsylvania Dutch, is cooked by which method?

Deep frying sets the batter as it is poured into the hot fat in overlapping circles, a technique with roots in the medieval Persian and Arab world.

Linzer torte, with its lattice top over a layer of fruit preserves, is named after a city in which country?

Austria's city of Linz gave the torte its name, and its nut-rich pastry is a Christmas favourite in several neighbouring countries as well.

Lekach, a honey-sweetened cake, is traditionally eaten at which Jewish holiday in hopes of a sweet year ahead?

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, and the Ashkenazi recipe for the cake grew out of medieval European honey cakes such as Lebkuchen.

Which Hungarian torte, unveiled in Budapest in 1885, tops its thin sponge layers with a sheet of hard caramel?

Dobos torte's caramel lid was practical as well as showy, since it stopped the cake drying out, and Emperor Franz Joseph was among the first to taste it.

Which French cake layers coffee-soaked sponge with ganache and coffee buttercream under a chocolate glaze?

Opera cake is said to have been named after the Palais Garnier in Paris by the wife of the pastry chef who claimed to have created it in 1955.

Smith Island cake, built from eight or more pencil-thin layers, is the official state dessert of which US state?

Maryland gave the cake that status in 2008, and bakers on its Chesapeake Bay island home take pride in keeping every layer perfectly even.

Which St. Louis cake, flat and dense with a sticky top, is said to have begun as a 1930s baker's mistake?

Gooey butter cake supposedly came out of a Depression-era mix-up at a local bakery, where the owner, short of supplies, baked the botched batch rather than throw it away.

Castella, a sponge cake that became a specialty of Nagasaki, was brought to Japan by merchants from which country?

Portugal's traders reached Japan in the sixteenth century, and the cake's name comes from their phrase for a cake from Castile.

Italy's traditional Easter cake, a counterpart to panettone, is baked in the shape of which bird?

A dove, colomba in Italian, is the form the dough is given before it is finished with a crust of pearl sugar and nuts.

Which Christmas cake from Verona has a traditional eight-pointed shape and a dusting of vanilla-scented sugar?

Pandoro's sugar coating is said to resemble the snowy peaks of the Alps, and the recipe took bakers in its home city about a century to perfect.

Which oatmeal-and-treacle gingerbread cake from northern England is traditionally eaten on Guy Fawkes Night?

Parkin first appears in the records in 1728, when a Yorkshire woman was accused of stealing oatmeal to make it.

Welsh cakes, small spiced rounds studded with dried fruit, are traditionally cooked in which way?

On a griddle or bakestone is the old way, which is why their texture sits somewhere between a biscuit, a scone and a pancake.

Sweden's princess cake, a dome of sponge, pastry cream and whipped cream, is traditionally covered in which colour?

Green was so central that the cake was first simply called green cake, and it was renamed because the Swedish princesses were said to be especially fond of it.

Baked Alaska, ice cream and cake sealed under browned meringue, is said to have been named at which New York restaurant?

Delmonico's is said to have coined the name in 1876 to honour the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire nine years before.

The rum baba, a small yeast cake soaked in syrup, is traditionally credited to an exiled king of which country?

Poland's exiled king Stanislaus is said to have had the idea of soaking a dried-out cake in alcohol after he settled in Lorraine.

Which Jimmy Webb song, first recorded by actor Richard Harris, is remembered for its image of a rain-ruined cake?

MacArthur Park became a number one disco hit for Donna Summer in 1978, and Webb has said that everything in the song was something he actually saw.

Pontefract cakes, small black discs named after a Yorkshire town, are not cakes at all but sweets made from what?

Liquorice was once grown in Pontefract on plots behind people's houses, and in the eighteenth century it was used as a medicine for both humans and horses.

Which town in Greater Manchester gives its name to a small round cake of flaky pastry filled with currants?

Eccles cakes were first sold commercially in 1793 by James Birch, and because the name has no protected status they can be made anywhere.

The eleven balls that traditionally decorate an Easter simnel cake stand for which group of people?

The faithful apostles are the twelve minus Judas Iscariot, the betrayer, though some bakers add a twelfth ball to stand for Jesus.

Which patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs gives his name to a French cake ringed with caramel-glazed cream puffs?

Honoré, a bishop of Amiens, is remembered twice over, because the cake was invented in the 1840s at a pastry shop on the Paris street that bears his name.

Spekkoek, a spiced cake built up from many thin layers, was developed under Dutch colonial rule in which country?

Indonesia's lapis legit, as the cake is known locally, marries European butter and flour with island spices such as cardamom, clove and mace.

Basbousa, a syrup-soaked cake popular across the Middle East and North Africa, is made from which grain product?

Semolina batter is baked in a sheet pan, drenched in sugar syrup and usually cut into diamonds or squares.

Which Norwegian and Danish celebration cake is a steep cone built from eighteen or more stacked rings?

Kransekake brings its own wedding game, in which the couple raise the top ring and the number of rings that cling to it is said to foretell how many children they will have.

The word 'short' in shortcake, used in English baking since the 1500s, describes which quality of the cake?

Crumbly texture is a fifteenth-century meaning of short, and bakers get it by working in a fat such as butter or lard.