Cake (pastry) : A cake is the generic name for any preparation of pastry sweet, which is cooked and which is made from a pasta or apparatus to which various ingredients are added, before or after cooking. Each cake has its own characteristics and can, moreover, be shaped or molded in various ways.
pasta and appliances basic are relatively few in number, but cakes can vary infinitely in shape, size, nature of ingredients and decoration.
History: The first cakes were simple pancakes all-purpose flour and water, to which were gradually incorporated miel, seeds, eggs, spices, butter, crème fraîche, milk. In the countryside, until recent times, cakes were often made from improved bread dough, variously enriched: they gave birth to buns, pognes, shells, fouaces et ceramics various.
In Antiquity, cakes were made baked between iron plates, ancestors of waffles, as well as preparations based on fromage blanc. In the Middle Ages, the preparations diversified, while remaining quite rustic; the most common were beignets, muzzle breakers, darioles, scalds, nieules, oublis, talmouses and tarts.
Soon, pastry chefs, associated in corporations, became creators, particularly during the Renaissance, under the influence of the Italian cooks whom Catherine de Medici had brought to the French court.
It was then that brioches, puff pastries, long-life “travel cakes” appeared, then chiffon biscuits, meringues and, finally, large architectural cakes, above all decorative. In the 18th and 19th centuries, cakes became masterpieces of refinement and ingenuity, especially when the pastry chefs were in the service of a prince or a great house.
Traditional recipes and cakes from around the world: Many cakes have a ritual or symbolic character, linked to a religious festival (Christmas, Easter
Epiphany, Candlemas). Family life has also always been an opportunity to enjoy cakes (of Baptism,anniversary., wedding or, simply, Sunday cake). In the countryside, daily life was often punctuated by cakes: those of vigils or meetings, those of market days or threshing days.
Some foreign cakes are well known in France (Baklava, Linzer cake, Panettone, pudding, Strudel, vatrushka, ….).
The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre gives, on this subject, a surprising example of culinary anthropomorphism: “Cakes are human, they look like faces. Spanish cakes are ascetic with a boastful air, they crumble into dust under the bite; Greek cakes are greasy like little oil lamps, when you squeeze them, the oil drips; German cakes have the great sweetness of a shaving cream, they are made so that obese and tender men eat them with abandon, without looking for their taste, simply to fill their mouths with sweetness. But these Italian cakes had a cruel perfection: very small, very neat, barely bigger than petit fours, they gleamed. Their harsh and garish colors took away any desire to eat them, we instead thought of placing them on consoles, like painted porcelain” (Dépaysement, Gallimard editions).
We distinguish between individual cakes, or “by the piece”, and large pieces; both sometimes bear the name of the one who created them or of the one to whom they were dedicated, or even evoke a geographical origin, but they are most often baptized with a fanciful name or a name which recalls their method of manufacturing. The name “dry cakes” refers to dry petit fours, biscuit products, small pancakes, etc., served with tea or ice cream.
Finally, the word “cake” applies to culinary preparations based on mash potatoes de vegetables or hachis various, molded and cooked in a bain-marie, served as a starter or as a garnish (cake poultry liver, carrot, cauliflower,…): these are in fact cooking “breads”
See as well Cake under Mouth slang.
Quote from Charles Bukowski, American writer, in Factotum: “They made little cakes, biscuits, tartlets and how much ».