Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients, and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate, and which share features with desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.
Pastry is baked food made with a dough of flour, water and shortening that may be savoury or sweetened. Sweetened pastries are often described as bakers' confectionery. The word "pastries" suggests many kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder, and eggs. Small tarts and other sweet baked products are called pastries. Common pastry dishes include pies, tarts, quiches, croissants, and pasties.
A doughnut or donut is a type of food made from leavened fried dough. It is popular in many countries and is prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and franchised specialty vendors. Doughnut is the traditional spelling, while donut is the simplified version; the terms are often used interchangeably.
A wedding cake is the traditional cake served at wedding receptions following dinner. In some parts of England, the wedding cake is served at a wedding breakfast; the 'wedding breakfast' does not mean the meal will be held in the morning, but at a time following the ceremony on the same day. In modern Western culture, the cake is usually on display and served to guests at the reception. Traditionally, wedding cakes were made to bring good luck to all guests and the couple. Nowadays, however, they are more of a centerpiece to the wedding and are not always even served to the guests. Some cakes are built with only a single edible tier for the bride and groom to share, but this is rare since the cost difference between fake and real tiers is minimal.
Icing, or frosting, is a sweet, often creamy glaze made of sugar with a liquid, such as water or milk, that is often enriched with ingredients like butter, egg whites, cream cheese, or flavorings. It is used to coat or decorate baked goods, such as cakes. When it is used between layers of cake it is known as a filling.
A profiterole, cream puff (US), or chou à la crème is a filled French choux pastry ball with a typically sweet and moist filling of whipped cream, custard, pastry cream, or ice cream. The puffs may be decorated or left plain or garnished with chocolate sauce, caramel, or a dusting of powdered sugar. Savory profiterole are also made, filled with pureed meats, cheese, and so on. These were formerly common garnishes for soups.
A bag-in-box or BiB is a container for the storage and transportation of liquids. It consists of a strong bladder, usually made of several layers of metallised film or other plastics, seated inside a corrugated fiberboard box.
Kringle is a Northern European pastry, a variety of pretzel. Pretzels were introduced by Roman Catholic monks in the 13th century in Denmark, and from there they spread throughout Scandinavia and evolved into several kinds of sweet, salty or filled pastries, all in the shape of kringle.
A mille-feuille, also known by the names Napoleon, vanilla slice, and custard slice, is a dessert made of puff pastry layered with pastry cream. Its modern form was influenced by improvements made by Marie-Antoine Carême.
An éclair is a pastry made with choux dough filled with a cream and topped with a flavored icing. The dough, which is the same as that used for profiterole, is typically piped into an oblong shape with a pastry bag and baked until it is crisp and hollow inside. Once cool, the pastry is filled with custard, whipped cream or chiboust cream, then iced with fondant icing. Other fillings include pistachio- and rum-flavoured custard, fruit-flavoured fillings, or chestnut purée. The icing is sometimes caramel, in which case the dessert may be called a bâton de Jacob. A similar pastry in a round rather than oblong shape is called a Religieuse.
Krumkake is a Norwegian waffle cookie made of flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and cream.
The St. Honoré cake, usually known by its French name gâteau St-Honoré, and also sometimes called St. Honoratus cake, is a pastry dessert named for the French patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, Saint Honoré or Honoratus, Bishop of Amiens. It was invented in 1847 at the Chiboust bakery on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris.
Buttercream, also referred to as butter icing or frosting, is used for either filling, coating or decorating cakes. The main ingredients are butter and some type of sugar.
Dobos torte, also known as Dobosh, is a Hungarian sponge cake layered with chocolate buttercream and topped with caramel. The layered pastry is named after its inventor, Hungarian chef József C. Dobos, a delicatessen owner in Budapest. In the late 1800s, he decided to create a cake that would last longer than other pastries in an age when cooling techniques were limited. The round sides of the cake are coated with ground hazelnuts, chestnuts, walnuts, or almonds, and the hardened caramel top helps to prevent drying out, for a longer shelf life.
Cake decorating is the art of dressing up of a cake for special occasions such as birthdays, weddings, national or religious holidays, or as a promotional good for a business. It is a form of sugar art that uses manipulation like icing, frosting, fondant, and other edible decorate can be consumed. Cake decorating can go beyond the simple art of dressing up a cake. There are cake decorators who have honed their skills in creating art from cake decorating: TV channels such as TLC, Food Network and Discovery Family have featured artisan bakers. They give us a glimpse into how the cake may be molded during baking or sculpted after baking. It may take on simple or elaborate three-dimensional shapes as part of its decoration or as its entirety. Chocolate is commonly used to decorate a cake. It can be melted and mixed with cream to make a ganache or cocoa powder can be lightly dusted on top of a cake.
The Long John is a bar-shaped, yeast risen pastry like a doughnut either coated entirely with glaze or top-coated with cake icing. They may be filled with custard or creme. The term Long John is used in the Midwestern U.S. and Canada, and has been used in Texas.
Schaumrollen, or Schillerlocken, are an Austrian confection. They consist of a cone or tube of pastry, often filled with whipped cream or meringue. Also called foam rollers, they are a bag or roll-shaped puff pastry, which is sweetened with whipped cream or meringue, or sometimes filled with an unsweetened cream puree. They are about 3 inches (7.6 cm) wide. The pastries are made by wrapping thin pastry strips spirally around a cone shaped sheet metal tube, which is then coated and baked. The sweet version is often rolled in coarse sugar or powdered sugar before baking.
