Another form of batter or dough is that to which after cooking the term cake is applied. Cakes are made light by the same means as other mixtures of this class and may be considered in the same order as the various forms of bread have been considered.

Thudicum speaks of cakes as "forms of sweetened, flavored, and ornamented bread that signalize an evolution of cookery and, like confectionery, or including it, are a measure of culture."

There is much of sentiment connected with different varieties of cake, which, apart from any intrinsic merit contained therein, commend them to their sponsors. Probably the cakes of greatest antiquity that are still in use are those that are lightened with yeast, as French brioche, Polish baba, kugel hopfe of the Germans, ratan cake, claimed by both the French and Germans, English Bath buns, and Scotch shortbread. The forms in which these cakes appear are numerous, varying with the object for which they are intended. They are modified, also, by the addition of fruit, nuts, etc. Sometimes, too, they are served with a rich syrup, flavored with wine, in which case they partake more of the character of a pudding. In respect to manipulation, these cakes may be classed under two heads, of which brioche and ratan cake may be taken as representative. Brioche is partly flaky, and rises in layers; while the ratan cake rises like sponge cake, in minute and uniform bubbles.

While these cakes are common abroad, especially in the countries to which they owe their origin, outside of our large cities they are not well known to housekeepers in the United States. In the cities there seems to be an increasing demand for this sort of toothsome dainty, yet, because of the time required in the preparation of all yeast mixtures, many housekeepers do pot attempt the production, but depend for supply upon some restaurant of noted excellence. Coffee cakes and zweiback (the last properly called biscuit, because literally twice baked) are the forms of these confections most common. Near akin to the ratan cake is the election, or loaf cake, so common in the early days of our republic.

What is sold abroad as biscuit, and here as sponge cake, and cakes made with butter, and known as cup and pound cakes, are the cakes most in evidence in this country. Of these sponge cake and pound cake, when tradition is followed, are lightened simply by the expansion of air incorporated into eggs by beating. Cup cakes are lightened partly by this method, but principally by the addition of carbon dioxide set free from a carbonate by an acid.

No article on cakes would be complete without special mention of meringues and petits chou, or cakelets, made of chou paste. Of the first Thudicum says: "Meringues are classical confections, having a good prospect of immortality, as they cannot easily be improved, spoiled, or altered. They have probably a history of more than a thousand years." Swedish meringues, in which starch supplies the place of a part of the egg whites, are a confection that may be classed with sponge cake. Petits chou may be regarded as the connecting link between cake and pastry; they afford grounds for considering, as do the French, the matter of cakes as a part of the general subject of pastry. These cakes are made of a batter previously boiled, and eggs; the hollow centres, when baked, are filled with sweetened and flavored cream or a custard mixture.