Cake
is a form of food that is
usually sweet and often
baked. Cakes normally combine
some kind of flour, a sweet-
ening agent (commonly
sugar), a binding
agent (generally egg,
though gluten or starch
are often used by
vegetarians and vegans),
fats (usually butter,
shortening, or margarine,
although a fruit purée such
as applesauce is sometimes substituted to avoid
using fat), a liquid
(milk,
water or fruit juice), flavors
and some form of leavening agent
(such as yeast or
baking powder), though many
cakes lack these ingredients and
instead rely on air
bubbles in the dough
to expand and cause
the cake to rise. Cake
is often frosted
with buttercream or marzipan,
and finished with piped borders
and crystallized fruit.
Cake is often the dessert of
choice for meals at ceremonial
occasions, particularly
weddings,
anniversaries and
birthdays. There are
countless cake recipes;
some are breadlike, some
rich
and elaborate and
many are centuries old.
Cake making is no longer
a complicated procedure;
while at one
time considerable labor
went into cake
making (particularly
the whisking of egg
foams), baking equipment and directions have been simplified
so that even the
most amateur cook
may
bake a cake.
Varieties of Cake Recipes
Cakes are broadly divided into several categories, based primarily on ingredients and cooking techniques.
Yeast cakes
are the
oldest, and
are very similar
to yeast breads.
Such cakes are
often very
traditional in
form, and include such pastries as babka and stollen.
Cheesecakes
use mostly
some form of
cheese
(often
cream cheese,
mascarpone,
ricotta or the
like), and
have very
little to
no flour
component
(though it
sometimes
appears in
the form
of a
(often
sweetened)
crust).
Cheesecakes
are also very
old, with
evidence of
honey-sweetened
cakes dating
back to ancient
Greece.
Sponge cakes
are
thought to be
the first
of the
non-yeast-based
cakes and
rely
primarily on
trapped air
in
a protein matrix (generally of beaten eggs) to provide leavening,
sometimes with a
bit of baking
powder or other
chemical
leaven
added as
insurance.
Such cakes
include the
Italian/Jewish
pan di
Spagna
and the
French
Génoise.
