When travelling I'm invariably drawn to shops selling the local pastries, 
where the cakes on offer are rarely labelled and so I'm usually forced to resort to
 the pointing and the 'One of those please'. 

So as a service to you if you've ever been confused by the cakes on sale in London bakers and cake shops,
or if you want to come prepared, I present the largely non-book-related Fictional Cities guide to
the cakes of my home town, and of my youth. And of course no guide to cakes in London can ignore the
Polish and Portuguese pastries now making inroads into our bellies.


Apple Turnovers






An uncontroversial cake to start with - it's a square (or circle) of sugar-laden flaky pastry folded and filled with apple, or at least some sugary apple-based gloop not unlike baby food. The only real mystery here is, or was, why there aren't turnovers containing any other fruit. I had heard rumours, but not until I clapped my eyes on, and my mouth around, the raspberry turnover (pictured below right) did I truly believe. An apple and blackcurrant turnover has recently been spotted too. And bought. And eaten.


Bath Buns


A bun which you usually eat in the bath. No, seriously...the bath bun was invented, so the story goes, by Dr W. Oliver, an 18th Century physician who treated visitors to the famous Bath Spa. His bun proved so popular, and his patients grew so fat, that he had to invent a plain biscuit - hence the Bath Oliver biscuit - for his patients to eat instead. The chunks of sugar sprinkled on the top of this otherwise rather plain bun were originally sugar-coated caraway seeds.


Battenberg
(aka Battenburg)



Bought in a brick and sliced, like fruit cake, the battenberg is a cake for the almond fan, its icing surround being more than a little marzipanish and, as with the frangipan tart, there's apricot jam too. It's famous for the pink and yellow check pattern of its sponge cake, which would be less desirable in, say, a shirt. (The large checker-board patterns on emergency vehicles in the UK are, I've just learned, called battenburg markings.) Said to have been first made to honour the marriage of one of Queen Victoria's granddaughters to Prince Louis of Battenberg in 1884, with each of the four squares representing one of the Battenberg princes.

Pimp your battenberg!
 

Belgian Buns

 


This brings us to cakes (and biscuits) named after places, and the question of whether this name actually reflects their place of origin. I've never seen or eaten a Florentine in Florence, the best Chelsea buns seem to be baked in Cambridge, and I doubt that Danish pastries bear any resemblance to pastries nibbled in Denmark.  So if you can confirm that Belgian Buns - an iced current bun with a cherry garnish - come from Belgium, I'd be grateful. A cursory Google of Belgian bun throws up (apart from an inaccurate wikipedia entry) mentions on UK sites only. These are mostly bun-obsessed bloggers, including one rightly disturbed by a pack of Tesco's Belgian buns containing lemon curd - yuk! (Although in fairness it must be added that the weirdly lemon-curd-obsessed bakers of Tesco also make the very yummy lemon curd croissant.) So Belgium may just retain its pure image as the land of fine chocolate and waffles.

 Update - June 2006
Prompted by the above, Jillian Wilkinson writes:
 'We lived in Brussels for 20 years and ate many of these things - they are called couque aux raisins and are similar to the British one but not so much icing sugar on top, and even lack the cherry sometimes.'
So, a bit of a shocker, because before reading this I would have said that a Belgian Bun without a cherry is not a Belgian Bun. And of course the cake wouldn't be called a Belgian bun in Belgium, now would it? The water is further muddied by talk of the Couque Suisse, but this seems to have more than a little of the Danish Pastry about; and it's finger-shaped.

Update - March 2008
Now, to further stir the controversy, comes an e-mail from Denyse Sanderson (a Brit now living in the USA) who says:
'Whilst living in Belgium (for 5.5 years) I never found a Belgian bun for sale. The couque aux raisins mentioned in your website has more of a Danish pastry consistency.'
Elsewhere in her e-mail Denyse establishes her bun cred by saying she's had Belgian buns 'with and without the cherry; with and without nuts on top; with lemon curd inside; with a blob of marzipan in the middle.' So she seems a woman to be believed.


Bread Pudding



A slab of dense, moist and spicy sponge, tasting a bit like booze-free Christmas pudding. This one's traditionally eaten hot with custard and is made from stale bread, as is...


Bread 'n' Butter Pudding



...but this one also has the appearance and texture of having been made from slices of bread, soaked in milk, with sugar, raisins and spices (cinnamon and/or nutmeg). It is also eaten hot and, being pretty squidgy, is really more of a dessert than a cake. In times past it was a way for poor people to use up leftover stale bread. Now we have more money and buy bread 'n' butter pudding ready-made from supermarkets, with added cream.


NB: The B'n'B pudding was photographed on a larger plate. 


Cheese Cakes



Not to be confused with cheese cake - these are sometimes called London Cheese Cakes to prevent confusion. They have a base of flaky pastry topped with icing that's full of coconut shreds. Sometimes there'll be some jam filling. But why is it called a cheese cake? A very good question.


Chelsea Buns


Bearing in mind my obsession, already confessed to, with the dubious origins of cakes named after places, imagine my delight a few years back at a British Museum exhibition of old prints of London in spotting a print of a place called The Chelsea Bun House. It was situated in Grosvenor Row, or Jew's Row, depending on which source you're consulting, but in Pimlico anyway, and so not strictly in Chelsea. Jonathan Swift visited in 1711 and got a stale bun for a penny. In its 18th Century heyday the place was run by a Richard Hand and patronised by George II and Queen Charlotte, and all the princesses; and later by George III.

A local poet described the buns as
Fragrant as honey and sweeter in taste!
As flaky and white as if baked by the light,
As the flesh of an infant soft, doughy and slight.
Later in the century the crowds that gathered to buy hot cross buns on Good Friday (said to be around 50,000 people) were such that Mrs Hand made the hard decision to cease selling them on that day.



 John Timbs in his Curiosities of London - as quoted on Mick Jackson's excellent Victorian London site - has this to say about the Bun House's later days and demise:


Chelsea has been famed for its Buns since the commencement of the last century... The Bun-house was also much frequented by visitors to Ranelagh, after the closing of which the bun-trade declined. Notwithstanding, on Good Friday, April 18, 1839, upwards of 240,000 buns were sold here. Soon after, the Bun-house was sold and pulled down; and at the same time was dispersed a collection of pictures, models, grotesque figures, and modern antiques, which had for a century added the attractions of a museum to the bun celebrity. Another bun-house was built; but the olden charm of the place had fled. 

Charles Dickens also mentions the place in Barnaby Rudge (the beginning of chapter 42 if you want to check) and in Bleak House (chapter 53). 

The bun itself is a big favourite of mine, being one of the few UK cakes to contain a real cinnamon kick. Cinnamon buns are unknown over here. It's curiously square and made from a deep roll of raisin-spotted dough. It can be enjoyed in the traditional unsubtle biting way, or by unrolling the spiral (see left) and nibbling as you go.


Chorley Cakes



Another place-named cake, like the Eccles cake below, and like the Eccles cake this is chock-full of raisins. The only difference is in the pastry, which is less flaky and more biscuit-y with this one. A flatter and less airy eating experience results.


Cream Horns



When I were a lad these were full of sweet imitation cream, but now they seem only to be found in supermarket fridges full of fresh cream and jam. The problem of which end you start at remains - I go for the non-pointy end myself.


Custard Tarts



A deep tart, full of custard, but cool and wobbly custard, not hot and runny custard, and flavoured with nutmeg. When I was young you could buy them from bakery shop widows, now they are found in supermarket fridges.

 
Danish pastries



An Apple Danish
OK, we'll take my thing about place-named cakes as read here. I'm hoping that some kind soul in Denmark might be able to help me out. Danish pastries as they're known in the UK are united by having a moist and chewy and quite heavy pastry. Beyond that there are several varieties and shapes. The simplest is the Fruit Danish, which is just a swirl of pastry with raisins. The Custard Danish, The Apricot Danish and the Apple Danish introduce us to different shapes, though. These flavours take the classic shape of the square of pastry with two opposite corners meeting. And sometimes they take the apple-turnover form.

 Update - August 2008
Some clarity at last. Barbara from Michael's Cycles in Worthing has a Danish mother-in-law who writes thusly:
The Danes don’t really have a word covering all of their range of Danish Pastries, tending to call each one by its particular name, and then they have a different type of pastry for times of the day, but generically they talk in terms of Wienerbrød. It really refers to the kringler, the big horseshoe shaped one that you have for breakfast. The name comes from the time when Danish bakers went to Vienna (Wien) in the Napoleonic wars and brought back what they had learned whilst there.
Barbara also informs me that the custard ones are known in Denmark as 'Pus in the Baker's Eye'. Lovely.

But then clarity descends into controversy! Richard in California finds a source that claims that some Austrian bakers who were hired to replace Danish bakers during a strike passed on their method (of rolling butter between the layers of puff pastry then letting it rest before shaping and baking) which the Danish bakers then spread around the World. So it's either a pastry technique that Danish bakers brought back from Austria or one that the Austrian bakers themselves took to Denmark.
 

Doughnuts


Another cake derived from the problem of leftovers, as the first doughnuts were reportedly made to use up leftover bits of bread dough. And another transatlantic controversy rears its head, but not as bad and puzzling as the muffin question, below. Your basic doughnut is a ball of dough, covered in sugar, with jam in the centre (pictured left) or a ring of dough covered in sugar. (The ring shape arrived at, we're told, to solve the problem of the uncooked centre and to make for more crispy evenness). And for centuries no one messes with this cosmic order. Then along comes the US of A and, well, Krispy Kreme - need I say more? Just like the influence of America in putting all sorts of weird toppings on pizzas that are unknown in Italy, so the doughnut has become a toppings free-for-all. Not all of them are gross, mind you - some involve cinnamon and are hence divinely inspired. In the words of Homer Simpson, wise for once, Doughnuts, is there anything they can't do? Oh and there's the anomalous apple doughnut, which is like an semi-circular apple turnover, but made of doughnut.

See also Yum-Yums - long and twisted doughnuts.


Eccles Cakes


This site, and this one too, tell of the murky history of claims regarding the invention and marketing of the Eccles cake, which originates from the place up north, somewhere. But wherever it is that they came from up there, they're now pretty common down here. Flaky pastry filled with raisins, basically, or sometimes a raisin paste - great if you like raisins, less attractive to the raisin-hater. The garibaldi biscuit (a biscuit with lots of raisins in it) was known in my childhood as the squashed-fly biscuit. But to my knowledge the Eccles has never been called...well, you get my point.


Frangipan tarts



A strangely named lattice-pattern covered spongy tart tasting of almonds and often with some apricot jam involvement. They are sometimes also called frangipane tarts. The name seems to have nothing to do with frangipani, a flower, but it is not unrelated to marzipan, I think, what with the almond thing. Sometimes another fruity ingredient will be added resulting in, for example, the cherry frangipan tart. Sometimes this mixing up will result in the frangipan metamophasising into franzipan, which takes us back to marzipan. So much semantic confusion over one small cake.


Fruit Cake


'Fruit' here means currents and raisins (and often cherries) similarly to the 'Fruit Danish' which signifies circularness and the presence of raisins. Fruit cake is mostly sold in brick-like slabs, or made domestically in the traditional round cake shape, but it is also available in individual slices. Sometimes known as cherry genoa. It also comes in a paler circular form with a sugary top, where its name then acquires one or more of the words country, house, traditional and manor. And, again - you'll have seen this coming by now - does the name "cherry genoa" have anything to do with Genoa the place?


Hot Cross Buns

Formerly only available around Easter but now a year-round fixture of supermarket cake shelves in packs offour. The symbolism seems obvious, but the bun dates, in fact, from before Christianity, as the Saxons baked them to honour their goddess Eostre, with the bun representing the sun and the cross the moon's four quarters.  Basically it's a sticky, spicy bun with a contrasting pale cross on top. Best split and buttered, they can also be split, toasted and buttered. Spreading jam as well is gilding the lily, in my opinion.

UK supermarkets have been indulging in lily-gilding too in recent years with many new versions of this old favourite. You can get Extra Spicy, Luxury (which usually just means more raisins), Apple & Cinnamon, Date and Cranberry, Cinnamon & Raisin and (brace yourself) Belgian Chocolate versions.

Patisserie Valerie branches in London only sell their hot cross buns for a month or so before Easter, but they are the best: much denser and tastier. And much more expensive.


Iced Fingers


 
A long iced bun, sometimes known as a Swiss Iced Finger, although whether it actually originated in Switzerland... Used to come with a filling of confectioners' 'cream' in my day, but not anymore.


Madeira Cake


 
Another place-name cake, this is one that you buy in a slab and spread with butter, or your low-fat spread of choice. The spreading is pretty much essential as its pretty boring without. Specially-taken photographs (left) demonstrate the difference.

I once knew a chap who liked to dip Madeira cake into his tea, like the rest of us do with biscuits. This is an unwise and very risky thing to do.

 

Muffins



 

 Here's another big Transatlantic can of worms. We've had muffins over here for bloomin' years - that's a picture of one over on the left. It's a boring soft white-bread thing you have to split and toast and put jam on to make edible, like crumpets, except for the splitting part. So far so traditional. But then we get globalised and muffins become interesting home-bakeable things like large fairy cakes, but rougher and tastier, and they're everywhere, and so real muffins become known as English Muffins, except over here where they're still just called muffins, as are the other sort. Clear?

 

Polish cakes















I live quite near Balham in South West London, an area that's long been a popular settling place for Poles, but with the recent increase in immigration from Eastern Europe there are more Polish people than ever living around here. Which means more Polish shops and delis, which means more places to find...


Paczki Polish doughnuts
Not dissimilar to the regular jam doughnut, but with a thin layer of icing over the top and sides. This icing has a citrusy tang to it and often contains bits of orange zest. The jam inside is traditionally rose-water flavoured. Not dissimilar then, just much nicer. They are traditionally eaten on the 'Fat Thursday', before Shrove Tuesday.





Drozdzowka Polish apple and cinnamon thing
I did the traditional 'what's that?' point and ask thing. And what it is is large and made of a bun-type pastry. It has a big dent full of chunky real-apple filling, and it's not light on the cinnamon.






Poppy seed cake
Can be (and is more usually) bought as a big slab that you slice up, but also comes as individual cakes. Redolent of the Danish in shape, but more bunlike and light in consistency, and chock full of poppy seeds, as you'd expect. The taste is unexpected, though, being more full of flavour than the ingredients might suggest. Maybe something else is going on here. Also said by the woman in my just-opened very-close Polish deli to be more of a Christmas thing.





Cocodoughnut
A darkish and squarish doughnut with coconut-flecked icing and a custardy filling. The sweetness of the icing tends to overwhelm the coconut bits a bit, and the added zing of the filling makes for a decidedly unsubtle cake, but not an unpleasant one


Portuguese custard tarts

Pretty similar to the native version, except smaller and with a pastry base that's best described as stout and chewy flaky pastry. They're also quite a bit sweeter with that caramelised topping replacing the nutmeg. So not really that similar at all.


Simnel Cake









An Easter cake that's only in the shops around Easter time*, unlike the hot cross bun. There is confusion as to whether the cake is named after Lambert Simnel, a fraudulent pretender to the throne of Henry VII who failed in an overthrow attempt but was pardoned and allowed to work in the King's bakery, or from a Roman bread called Siminellus. There is also talk of a cake-making argument between a couple called Simon and Nelly, but this sounds far too twee for my liking, or believing.

It is said to have traditionally been cooked by poor girls working as servants for rich folk, to be given to their mothers on Mothering Sunday, for which servants and apprentices got time off to go and visit, providing they weren't gone longer than five days. Back then the cake was thinner and harder and so more akin to a biscuit, it is said.

Now it's a light, but still quite spicy, fruitcake with a soft marzipan layer in the middle. It's topped with marzipan and has eleven marzipan balls on top which symbolise the apostles, minus Judas. (Those with twelve balls are said to represent the apostles minus Judas, but with an added ball for Jesus.) The more perceptive amongst you might be getting the impression that this is a cake for marzipan lovers. Spot on!




 

*GREAT NEWS? May 2006
Marks and Spencer are now selling a utilitarian year-round brick of simnel cake (see left) similar to their no-frills iced Christmas cake. But the prospect of simnel cake being available for the other 11 months of the year is a mixed blessing - will it lose its allure by being non-seasonal? I'll let you know.

Update - August 2006
Well I needn't have worried - it didn't last much into June. Making it the biggest M&S product-discontinuation disappointment since my Mum's favourites, the fabled Polar Bears & Icebergs (sort of fruity-creamy flavoured gummy polar bears sharing a bag with coconut 'icebergs'.)

 


Tottenham Sponge



As place-named cakes go this is an obscure one, I admit. A sponge cake topped with jam, and occasionally sprinkled with desiccated coconut flakes, at least it was in bakeries in Hoxton when I was a nipper. Not a sophisticated cake, but with a simple charm in this age of passion cake and patisseries. Controversially a cake going by the same name has been spotted (and photographed left) with an unnatural-looking pink icing on it. 

Also there's a bakery in Nunhead in South East London that do something called Totty, which sounds very like.

Update - November 2008
A helpful chap called Alan sends me a link which challenges my belief that the Tottenham Sponge is authentically jam-red rather than a bilious pink. This site has a quote from Ted (later Lord) Willis's autobiography in which he says: "a peculiar local invention was Tottenham Cake. It consisted of a scone like base covered with lurid pink icing. It was baked in long flat trays, then cut into cubes, which retailed for a penny each. Luckily the cake was not always cut evenly or the icing uniformly spread, and the smaller defective pieces were sold off at half price."



All cakes photographed by me and guaranteed eaten within mere minutes of the photograph being taken. 
No waste here.



Venice // Florence // London // Berlin
Home