Types of Cakes: A Practical Guide to the Cakes Britain Loves

Walk into any good British bakery and the cake counter can look like a dozen unrelated things. In fact most cakes belong to a small number of families, and once you know which family a cake comes from you can predict how it will taste, how long it will keep, and whether it is the right choice for a birthday, a wedding or a Sunday afternoon. This guide explains the main types of cake popular in Britain, how bakers make them and what each is best for.

The five families of cake

Bakers classify cakes mainly by the way the batter is mixed, because that is what creates the crumb.

There is also the all-in-one method, where everything goes into the bowl at once. It produces a slightly closer crumb than true creaming and is widely used in home baking and some bakeries for speed.

Sponge cakes

Victoria sandwich

The Victoria sandwich, named after Queen Victoria, is the benchmark British cake: two rounds of creamed sponge sandwiched with jam. Traditional recipes use equal weights of butter, sugar, eggs and flour. In strict show-bench tradition the filling is raspberry jam alone, with caster sugar dusted on top, though most bakeries add buttercream or whipped cream. A good one is level, golden, fine-crumbed and moist enough to eat without a cup of tea, though the tea is still recommended.

Genoise

Genoise is a whisked sponge with a little melted butter, originally from Italy and adopted wholesale by French patisserie. It is lighter and drier than a Victoria sponge, which is the point: it is designed to be brushed with syrup and layered with cream, fruit or mousse. If you love the fresh cream and strawberry cakes in a patisserie window, you are probably eating genoise.

Chiffon

Chiffon cake, an American invention of the twentieth century, uses oil instead of butter and folds in whipped egg whites. The result is tall, very light and stays soft even in the fridge, which is why it is the base of choice in many Asian bakeries for cream cakes, pandan cakes and Japanese-style strawberry shortcakes.

Madeira cake

Madeira contains no Madeira wine. The name comes from the fortified wine it was served with in the nineteenth century. It is a firm, close-textured creamed cake, often with lemon, and it is a favourite of cake decorators because it carves cleanly and holds the weight of fondant and tiers.

Flavoured and modern classics

Lemon drizzle

A creamed lemon sponge soaked while still warm with lemon juice and sugar, which forms a crackly crust as it sets. Arguably the most popular cake in British cafes, and a good test of a bakery: it should be sharp as well as sweet.

Carrot cake

An oil-based cake with grated carrot, spices and often walnuts or raisins, finished with cream cheese frosting. The carrot keeps the cake moist rather than making it taste of vegetables.

Red velvet

An American cake with a mild cocoa flavour, a gentle tang from buttermilk and vinegar, and a red colour that today usually comes from food colouring. It is almost always paired with cream cheese frosting. A good red velvet tastes of something; a poor one tastes only of sugar and colouring.

Coffee and walnut

A creamed sponge flavoured with strong coffee, filled and topped with coffee buttercream and walnut halves. It is a staple of tea rooms and village fêtes and an excellent choice for older relatives' birthdays.

Chocolate cakes

"Chocolate cake" covers everything from a creamed chocolate sponge to oil-based "devil's food" styles and dense, flourless cakes. For a birthday, ask the baker which style they use: an oil-based chocolate cake stays moist for longer and copes better with a chilled cream filling.

Fruit cakes and festive cakes

Rich fruit cake is the backbone of British celebrations: Christmas cake, the traditional wedding cake, and Simnel cake at Easter, with a layer of marzipan baked through the middle and eleven marzipan balls on top, often said to represent the apostles without Judas. Dundee cake, from Scotland, is a lighter fruit cake decorated with concentric rings of whole blanched almonds. Fruit cakes keep for weeks when well wrapped and are the most practical choice if you need to post a cake or bake well ahead.

Other British cakes worth knowing

• Battenberg: pink and yellow sponge squares in a chequerboard, wrapped in marzipan.
• Swiss roll: a thin whisked sponge rolled around jam or cream.
• Parkin: a sticky oatmeal and black treacle cake from the North of England, eaten around Bonfire Night.
• Tottenham cake: a simple sheet sponge with bright pink icing, linked to London's Quaker bakers.
• Tray bakes: any cake baked in a shallow tin and cut into squares, ideal for parties and school fairs.

Comparing popular cakes

Choosing cake flavours

If you are ordering a celebration cake, the flavour matters as much as the design. A few combinations that bakers return to again and again:

• Crowd-pleasers: vanilla and raspberry, chocolate and salted caramel, lemon and blueberry.
• Grown-up: coffee and walnut, dark chocolate and cherry, pistachio and raspberry, earl grey and lemon.
• Seasonal: elderflower and strawberry in early summer, spiced apple in autumn, orange and cranberry at Christmas.
• From around the world: pandan, matcha, mango and passion fruit, rose and cardamom, tres leches.

For mixed groups, a two-tier cake with a different flavour in each tier is an easy compromise. And if anyone has an allergy, remember that pistachio, praline and many "nutty" flavourings bring tree nuts into the kitchen.