I read somewhere that if something starts out moist and gets dry with time, then it's a cake; if it starts out dry, and gets moist with time, then it's a biscuit. Also, happy birthday!
shmuelparzal
I LOVE moon cakes. They have beautiful golden brown designs on the top and fluted edges typically. The inside is filled with a dense, rich, sweet bean paste. I know eating a sweet bean paste is weird to many westerners, but nothing about the bean paste is savory. It’s like red bean paste or mung bean paste. Sometimes the moon cake has a salted egg yolk in the middle. The yolk is not runny or wet, it’s similar in texture to the bean paste. The combination of yolk and bean paste is salty sweet and yummy. Not to mention the bright yellow yolk looks beautiful against the red bean and pastry.
This cake goes well with a sip of unsweetened green or oolong tea between bites.
danieladownie
Happy birthday! And there's always Pound Cake, which is really more of a loaf than a cake, but it's alleged to have gotten its name because its ingredients include a pound each of the cake trinity -- butter, sugar, and flour. It looks a lot like the Madeira cake, but I don't think they're the same.
BTW, the Depression Cake recipe you posted did include sugar, although the original cup and a half was marked down in a handwritten note to half a cup. Also, in the U.S., this would have been a recipe for city folk. People who lived in rural areas on farms would have still had free access to eggs, milk, and butter because they grew their own.
JonBastian
I've always wanted a moon cake, but instead I eat a Hostess moon pie on lunar new year lol
IcyPandaGirl
Couldn’t the name tiramisu as “pick me up” also refer to the caffeine in the cake without the activities that followed the caffeine?
elenas
Devils food cake is just what it’s called when I make a cake
Happy early birthday by the way!
HeadCannon
Battenburg cake is known as "Dr Who" cake in my family. That's because we always seemed to eat it when Dr Who was on the telly and 5 year old me thought it was mandatory. Happy birthday Patrick!
zappawench
Happy womb escape, matey! If I could share a cake today with you, I'd like to serve you some legitimate Brazilian Souza Leão's Cake. IDK exactly who Souza Leão was (some aristocrat from colonial times), but it is a historical middle finger to the court in Portugal who tried to have a monopoly on sugar here by simply creating a cake with 1.5kg (3 pound-ish) of cane sugar in the recipe.
cgzepp
Happy Birthday, Patrick! Have a great holiday/vacation!!
techman
Happy Birthday, Patrick!!!
One cake/pastry/confection you missed explaining the name for is the Napoleon. I assume that it was named after the (in-)famous Corsican who took control of France in the post-Revolutionary period and declared himself emperor, but I'd like to know why.
shruggzdastr-facedclown
“The day after this video goes live will be my birthday, and then I’m taking the next week off to unwind and relax, etc..” “but then I carried on thinking about cake, and all the origins of the different cakes and how they got their names, and the meaning behind them.” Yep, that’s a fellow Virgo for you - (Sep 5) 🤗💕. *Side note - my birthday is September 7!* My friends and family always tell me how I’m trying to find out the origins of things all the time too lol. Happy Belated Birthday Virgo Bro 🥳🎂🎉🎊🎁🎈
sammierose
You didn’t mention it but damn do I want a German Chocolate Cake...
Tygor
Happy birthday, Patrick! Enjoy your week off.
New_Wave_Nancy
Happy birthday! I hope you enjoy your festivities and break from work.
A type of cake from my home area is the shoo-fly cake. It seems particular to Pennsylvania in the US and specifically the Pennsylvania "Deutsche" community. Like a depression cake, it uses no eggs, only a bit of fat, and bakes up with a moist, tender crumb. The result is like a honey/molasses-cinnamon coffee cake.
And now that you have me so excited about cake, I think I know what I'm making tomorrow.
PhosphorAlchemist
Happy birthday, Patrick!
Damn it! Because of you, now I want cake after work 😂
interfear
Happy Birthday! Enjoy your time off! Never tried Jaffa Cake, it looks like a cookie to me.
ramata
Battenberg was the original name of the Mountbattens (Prince Phillip and his famous uncles), changed during WWI to sound less German, just like Saxe-Coburg and Gotha became Windsor.
baronvonscharfenberg
Happy Birthday and a swiss roll cake with a curious name in my country as a present.
Swiss roll cake in Spanish are called "brazo de gitano" (literally "gipsy's arm", yes they have a slur in the name, though in Spanish gitano often doesn't have that bad a connotation). And that weird name has two explanation, one having to do with Caló people (Spanish Romani by their proper name) and other with the origin of the name "gitano" itself.
The first is that it was created by a Spanish monk while in Egypt, so it was a "brazo egiptiano" the adjective egiptiano in mosern Spanish turned into "gitano" and that's also why the term also exist in Spanish for the kaló, because people in the XVI thought that Kalo and Romani people came from Egypt.
The other has to do with the XIX travelling Kalo merchants in Barcelona, who sold and fixed pots and pans for local pastry shops and when their work was particularly good, were rewarded with some free slices of swiss roll to take on the go, but because their hands were full with their wares, they took it on their arm and ate from there, so from that curious habit the cake began to be called "brazo de gitano".
Elsenoromniano
Depression cake was sometimes called Wacky cake in the U.S. It was the first cake I learned to bake, and my mom, who was born during the Depression, got the recipe from her mom (who must have gotten it from a magazine).
miz_logo_lee
In swedish the word cake is devided into to different words and categories depending on what type of cake it is refering to. The first is kaka (which also refer to cookie/biscuit) which usually have no whipped cream on it or in layers, or the types typically served for fika (either just having a cup or coffee, tea time or just be out in a cafeteria or bakery having some pastery), such as sockerkaka (sponge/sugarcake), kladdkaka (mudcake), tigerkaka (tigercake, it's basically spongecake but with chocolate batter poured into the spongecake batter, making it look like tiger stripes when cut hence the name), Battenbergkaka (Battenberg cake that you mentioned), morotskaka (carrot cake) among others.
The other term is tårta (coming from french torte), which is more for birthdays, celeberations or when you feel for something richer than just kaka, like jordgubbstårta (strawberry cake/strawberry short cake), cheese cake (which has the same name as the english version to distinguish it from ostkaka, which is more of a pudding than a cake, introduced by imigrating swedes and can be found in Minnesota where many have swedish ancestery, on a side note, swedes typically have a cakebottom made from digestive crackers rather than spongecake, though personally I prefer the latter), chokladtårta (chocolate cake but there is chokaldkaka as well, mudcake or other kinds of kaka), rulltårta (swiss roll, swiss roll cake, jelly roll, roll cake, cream roll or swiss log) and bröllopstårta (wedding cake).
There is one type of tårta which is a not an actual cake but technically a big sandwich that looks like a cake, smörgåstårta (sandwich-cake or sandwich-torte) which is made of several layers of white or light rye bread with a creamy filling (typically mayonaise) and the base and filling can contain one or several of these: egg, liver pâté olives, shrimp, ham, cold cuts, caviar, tomatoes, cumber, grapes, lemon slices, cheese and smoked salmon. Even if many swedes disagree with me, this is not a real cake, it's a psuedo cake, that is served as an alternative to an ACTUAL cake/torte at parties which doesn't agree with my taste buds (I find totally distest it with a burning passion, it's just disgusting, nothing I personally recommend but hey who am I to stop from taste, just don't say I didn't warn you).
