Cake has been around for a long time, but mostly less than great forms. It took the Industrial Revolution, the advent of plentiful sugar, and some good old American know-how to come together to make the cake we know and love today. Find out all about it in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who are the main hosts discussing cake in this episode?
Cake. This made me just frankly want to put my face in a cake. I know. Sheet caking. Oh, man. Yeah. I know we had a discussion about cake or pie quite a while ago. I don't remember exactly where you landed on that.
I'm surprised you can only think of one.
Chapter 2: What are some popular types of cakes and personal favorites?
One time we've done that? Yeah.
Cake or pie, both. Yeah, same here. Why choose between two wonderful things that you don't have to choose between? Agreed. As a matter of fact, every once in a while, you'll hit like the birthday party jackpot where they'll have like cake and pie. And you're like, looks like I'm in heaven. But today, Chuck, we're not talking about pie.
Although we can talk about one pie in particular because we're talking about cake. It turns out, I saw this somewhere, that Boston cream pie is actually a cake. Oh, really? Yeah. Surprise, Boston. Sorry to ruin your day.
They're probably the ones that are like... that are saying that. Oh, yeah, probably. Maybe. I don't know. It's a cake, huh?
The article on it was written in a thick Boston accent. Yeah. Yeah, it is a cake. I'm not sure why, but I just know it's a cake now. And I want to give a hat tip here. I mean, we both worked off of the How Stuff Works article. But I also found a lot of good stuff on a site called What's Cooking America. Did you run across them? I did. They are good, man.
They have, you know, clearly their niche is cooking, baking, all things like culinary. But they've got some really well-researched articles on their site about, like, the history of cakes and things like that. Yeah, that's good stuff. Kudos to you. You remember Kudos? The granola bar? Those are great. Oh, yeah. Are those not around anymore? No. No? No, those are gone.
And then RIP also Bonkers Candy. So kudos went the way of the dodo.
I never heard of Bonkers.
They were like a fruit chew, but like really had some chew to it. Not like Starburst, you know, it just disintegrates. These were like, they were chewy. They were good. They're about as good as it gets really candy wise.
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Chapter 3: What is the historical origin of cake and birthday cake traditions?
Well, and at my house at Halloween, we gave away two things. We gave away whole slices of pound cake and just figs. It was the worst house on the block. Did you – are you a pound cake fan? Not typically. Like I would never order a pound cake or say, hey – Can someone bake me one for my birthday? You wouldn't say, like, Clark me a pound cake? No, I would never ask someone to Clark me a pound cake.
But occasionally, like in my life, someone has had pound cake and said, would you like some pound cake? And it's, you know, it's good. It's good, sugary and dense stuff. Yeah.
I like it because you can just eat it with your hand. Sure, just pick it up and eat it. Yeah, it's like cake on the go.
Yeah, I am not a fan of lemon cakes. Oh, really? It's like a lemon pound cake I'm not into.
Well, okay, let's just get it out there. What's your favorite cake of all time? Oh, jeez.
I'm going to toss it up between a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. That's Bill Clinton's favorite. Well, you know. As Bill goes, so goes Chuck. Which is not true.
That was a good COI.
The carrot cake with cream cheese frosting or I like a red velvet cake. Really? Yeah. Well, that's the southern version, I think. With buttercream or cream cheese frosting. Yeah.
You can go either way?
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Chapter 4: How did the Industrial Revolution change the cake we know today?
It's not a cream cheese thing. What's your favorite?
Favorite of all time. Well, everybody knows that cake perfection was achieved sometime in the 20th century when Publix grocery stores started selling their yellow cake with buttercream frosting. Oh, yeah? There's no better cake on the planet. It's like a yellow sheet cake? Mm-hmm. It's simple. But it's tasty. It doesn't need any dressing up.
But if it does, we'll just put like some – add some more frosting in the shape of balloons on top, right? It's just perfection. It's the perfect cake. I love it. I can eat it morning, noon, and night. I can eat stale stuff I found in the dumpster behind Publix. I can eat the fresh stuff right out of the oven so hot that it burns my mouth. I would eat it any way that it was given to me.
Yeah. I'm a big frosting and icing guy, too. So a corner piece of sheet cake is pretty much heaven.
Yeah, that is the tops. What is Yumi's favorite cake? Yumi's is actually the same as mine. We both are junkies for Publix cake, to tell you the truth. Although I have to say she introduced me to the wonder of Japanese cakes. And there's this little-known fact about Japan. It loves to take – I shouldn't say it's little-known. Probably a lot of people know this.
But it loves to take things that other cultures came up with and then improve them 10,000%. Right. And one of the things that they've done that with is the French bakery. So if you go to Japan, you'll see all these cute little kind of Provence-style French bakeries everywhere that sell the best baked goods you've ever had in your life, right? Better than Paris? Yes. Oh, by far. By far.
That's very controversial. It is, but I'm telling you, you would just be like, Josh was right. This is better. I'm not kidding. They've improved on it. And they're very deferential still. They're like, oh, well, this is crap compared to what the French are making, however you would say that in Japanese. Uh-huh. But they're actually wrong. It actually is better.
But one of the things that they make that's just top notch is this what they call cheesecake. It is not what you or I would call cheesecake at all. It's more like a yellow spongy cake. I don't know where the cheese thing comes in. Maybe there's a little cream cheese in there. I'm not quite sure.
but um you and i would call it like kind of a dense yellow sponge cake but it is very very tasty and that's a kind of a japanese tradition that i would guess yumi would say is one of her favorites okay and just a little shout out there's a place in toronto uh next time we're there i'm going to take you there all right uh actually that's not true i brought you a cake from there from uncle tetsu's oh yeah cheesecake bakery yeah that's a japanese cheesecake oh that was good yeah they're the bomb
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Chapter 5: What is the chemistry behind baking a cake?
Have you ever heard that German chocolate cake and red velvet cake are the same? It's actually not true. I haven't heard that. I had heard that many times. It's not true. But that German chocolate frosting is like, man, that's good. I'm not into that.
See, I think that's what it is that I don't like. I like sort of a tradition.
butter creamy or just good old-fashioned birthday cake icing type thing yeah i mean yeah and and surely you agree public's is the pinnacle of that i don't know if i've ever had a public's cake oh i go to public's three times a week so next time i'm just gonna well now that you say that it might be best that you stay away well because you're gonna start adding us they sell it by the slice which is dangerous oh they do because that was that's the only way i would want to do it they sell it by the slice chuck like i can't bring a whole cake in my house
Be sure you look closely because they have – yeah, it would be. They sell also the same kind with like a cream cheese frosting. You want yellow cake with buttercream frosting.
Okay.
Just give it a shot and let me know what you think.
All right. The funny thing is we really haven't even started yet.
No. Do you want to take a break?
No. Let's at least give out like three facts first.
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Chapter 6: What role do leavening agents play in cake baking?
Right. And a lot of English words have like Germanic or Norse origins. Do you know that?
Yeah.
So cake – the word cake is of English origin. So is bread. And apparently the bread and the cakes from back in the day, say during the medieval era – They were very, very similar. Probably the only difference was the cake might be slightly smaller.
Yeah.
And it was definitely sweeter. So cake was like a sweeter version of bread back then.
Yeah, they'd add a little honey to it, but it's not like what we think of as cake today.
But that's not where the first cakes originated. They actually go way, way, way further back than that, right? Is that true? Yeah, it's true. Tuk-tuk? Yeah. That may be a little too far back. Yeah, I think so. So, but basically around the time, I believe, of Egypt, the pharaonic Egypt, they were making cakes using hot stones and honey and some sort of grain mashed up. Right.
It seems like, I bet the Chinese were doing it too, didn't say in here. Right. But it seems like anytime you're talking about who did stuff first. It's like Egyptians, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans. Pretty much. I mean, you know, ancient civilization. But maybe not China because it doesn't seem like a very cakey culture.
No, I'm not sure about Chinese cakes. I don't think I've ever had one.
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Chapter 7: How do fats, sugars, eggs, flour, and liquids contribute to cake texture?
I bet you someone knows, though. And I bet you there's like one of the best things in the world. It's probably a Chinese cake.
You know, one of the other things, too, that I didn't realize that I learned from this article, Chuck, was that a lot of the cakes you see around the world that you would mistake for, you know, customary or traditional cakes or that culture. They're actually relatively new.
The cake that we know and love and understand is very much a 19th century American invention that came out of the Industrial Revolution.
That's right. I mean, clearly, like in Germany, like you talked about in the 15th century, they were making cakes. They were actually even serving cakes at birthdays. And by all accounts, that's probably the first people to start the birthday cake tradition. But and I think they even put candles on top. Well, none of the Greeks put candles on top, but it wasn't like a happy birthday cake.
No, it was more like, hey, this cake is round like the moon. And we're going to put candles on it to make them glow. And they're probably huge candles now that I think about it.
Yeah, the Greeks gave us the round cake and putting candles on the cake to honor Artemis to make the cake look like the moon. And Artemis was the goddess of the moon, right? Right. So they were like, look, Artemis, what do you think of this cake? She'd be like, it needs some frosting.
That's right. And then the Germans in the 1400s started doing birthday cakes. And in the 1700s were... full-on, like, it's a kid's birthday party, it's got candles, it's a cake, and we'll sing some depressing German song.
Right. It makes you reflect on your own existence. That's right. And its eventual end. So by the time people were making birthday cakes in Germany, there was a long, long, long tradition of cakes already. And the word cake had started to originate in medieval Britain. But there was such a thing as a cheesecake already. The Romans created that and called it placenta. Seriously. Really? Yeah.
The Greeks had created something that was basically a prototype of the fruitcake, plakous, I believe. Yeah, they called it feces. Right. So there were all these kind of cakes and breads and things that were starting to be developed. And I think even that pound cake that you're not so hip on came before the Industrial Revolution too.
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Chapter 8: What are the best practices for baking a cake in an oven?
Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I think our universe is absolutely extraordinary.
Hello, I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites along with nature's other creepy crawlies. And there's just endless things about this universe that I find fascinating.
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