Cake

Cake is a form of sweet dessert that is typically baked. In it's oldest forms, cakes were modifications of breads, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate, and that share features with other desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, pies.

                                                                       Main Ingredients
Usually flour, salt, sugar,eggs, butter, or oil.Typically cake ingredients are flour, sugar, eggs, butter or oil, a liquid, and leavening agents, such as baking soda or baking powder. Common additional ingredients  and flavourings include dried, candied, or fresh fruits, nuts, cocoa, and extracts such as vanilla, with numerous substitution for the primary ingredients. Cakes can also be filled with fruit preservatives or dessert sauces (like pastry cream), iced with buttercream or other icings, and decorated  with marzipan, piped borders or candied fruits.
   Cake is often served as a celebratory dish on ceremonial occasions such as wedding, anniversaries, and birthdays. There are countless cake recipes, some are bread-like, some are rich and elaborate, and many are centuries old. Cake making is no longer a complicated procedure, while at one time considerable labor went into cake making (particularly the whisking of egg foams), baking equipments and directions have been simplified so that even the most amateur cook may bake a cake.
                                                       History

The term "cake" has a long history. The word itself is of viking origin, from the old Norse word "kaka". The ancient Greeks called cake plakous, which was derived from the word " Flat", Plakoeis. It was baked using flour mixed with eggs, milk, nut and honey. They also had a cake called "Satura" which was a flat heavy cake. During the Roman period, the name for cake became "Placenta" which was derived from the Greek term. Placenta were baked on a pastry base or inside a pastry case. The Greeks invented beer as a leavener, frying fritters in olive oil, and cheese cakes using goats milk. In ancient Rome, basic bread dough was sometimes enriched with butter, eggs, and honey, which produced a sweet and cake-like baked bread. Latin poet Ovid refers his and his brothers birthday party and cake in his first book of exile, Tristia.
 Early cakes in England were also essentially bread: the most obvious difference between a "cake" and "bread' were the round flat shape of the cakes, and the cooking method, which turned cakes over once while cooking, while bread was left upright throughout the baking process.Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the renaissance, possibly in Spain.
                                             Cake Decorating
A finished cake is often enhanced by covering it with icing, or frosting, and toppings such as sprinkles which are also known  as " Jimmies" in certain parts of the United States and "hundreds and thousands" in the united kingdom. Frosting is usually made from powdered (icing) sugar, sometimes a fat of some sort, milk or cream, and often flavorings such as vanilla extract or cocoa powder. Some decorators use a rolled fondant icing.
     Commercial bakeries tend to use lard for the fat, and often whip the lard to introduce air bubbles. This makes the icing light and spreadable.Home bakers either use lard, butter, margarine, or some combination thereof.