Cake Trivia
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100 free Cake trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Cake trivia questions with answers. Cake has a longer, stranger history than the frosting suggests, and this quiz covers it from Viking etymology to the Great British Bake Off. It starts with rituals: the 1746 German birthday cake with a candle for every year, why we blow them out in one breath, the bride's pie with a ring hidden inside, and how Queen Victoria's white icing became 'royal icing'. Then the famous cakes and their origin fights: Sachertorte's decades in the Austrian courts, Australia and New Zealand's pavlova feud, the Waldorf-Astoria's red velvet claim, the priestly exemption behind stollen, panettone's baker named Tony, and why devil's food cake turns red. There is Americana too: Duncan Hines the critic, Betty Crocker who never existed, the banana-filled original Twinkie, Boston cream pie that is really a cake, and the tribunal that ruled Jaffa Cakes are cakes because they go hard when stale. Easy questions are fine for kids and family quiz night; the harder ones will stretch keen bakers. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on each cake, and the source sentence appears under each question after you answer.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The English word 'cake' comes from kaka, a word in which language?
Old Norse
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.
Q 02Chiffon cake, credited to insurance salesman Harry Baker in 1927, owed its lightness to which then-secret ingredient?
Vegetable oil
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.
Q 03A famous early record of a birthday cake with one candle per year comes from a 1746 party in which country?
Germany
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.
Q 04By tradition, a birthday wish comes true only if what happens?
All candles go out in one breath
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.
Q 05A popular myth says which white icing got its name from Queen Victoria's 1840 wedding cake?
Royal icing
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.
Q 06The first completely edible tiered wedding cake was made for the 1882 wedding of which royal?
Prince Leopold
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.
Q 07Despite its name, German chocolate cake comes from which country?
United States
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.
Q 08The phrase 'Let them eat cake' appears in the 1760s writings of which philosopher?
Rousseau
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.
Q 09The original French of 'Let them eat cake' actually refers to which food?
Brioche
Brioche, enriched with butter and eggs, was a luxury; there is no evidence Marie Antoinette ever said the line.
Q 10Which spirit is the essential flavouring in an authentic Black Forest gateau?
Kirsch
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.
Q 11Sachertorte, the Viennese chocolate cake, is layered with which jam?
Apricot
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.
Q 12Which Viennese pastry shop fought the Hotel Sacher for decades over the 'original' Sachertorte?
Demel
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.
Q 13Battenberg cake, with its pink-and-yellow chequered cross-section, is wrapped in what?
Marzipan
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.
Q 21Baumkuchen, whose name means 'tree cake', is baked how?
In layers on a rotating spit
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.
Q 22A king cake is traditionally associated with which Christian feast?
Epiphany
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.
Q 23Panettone, the Christmas sweet bread, is associated with which Italian city?
Milan
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'.
Q 14The Victoria sponge became possible after Alfred Bird created which product in 1843?
Baking powder
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.
Q 15An urban legend has which New York hotel charging a diner $100 for its red velvet cake recipe?
The Waldorf-Astoria
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.
Q 16Devil's food cake gets its reddish-mahogany colour from cocoa reacting with what?
Baking soda
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.
Q 17Angel food cake is made with eggs in which form?
Whites
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.
Q 18Lord Lamington, the lamington's reputed namesake, governed which Australian state?
Queensland
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.
Q 19The pavlova, disputed between Australia and New Zealand, is named after a Russian what?
Ballerina
Ballerina Anna Pavlova toured Australia and New Zealand in the 1920s, and each country claims the meringue dessert was created in her honour.
Q 20Kouign-amann, a caramelised butter-and-sugar layered cake, comes from which French region?
Brittany
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.
Q 24Stollen, the fruit bread dusted with icing sugar, is the Christmas speciality of which city?
Dresden
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.
Q 25Simnel cake, familiar at Easter, was the traditional gift servants took home on which day?
Mothering Sunday
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.
Q 26An ancient Roman cake recipe mixed raisins, pine nuts and which seeds into barley?
Pomegranate
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.
Q 27Which dessert is reputed to have been served to athletes at the first Olympic Games in 776 BC?
Cheesecake
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.
Q 28American cream cheese was developed in 1872 by a dairyman trying to copy which French cheese?
Neufchâtel
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.
Q 29Carrot cake's popularity in Britain was revived by rationing during which conflict?
World War II
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.
Q 30A 1925 recipe contest that drew 2,500 pineapple upside-down cakes was run by the Hawaiian company later named what?
Dole
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.