h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

as an office worker, my life and the lives of my colleagues revolve around birthdays, high days and holiday-type occasions and the arrival of the baker's van. Obviously we spend more time talking about cakes than actually eating them... so the burning question of the day is "what is the difference between a cake and a bun?". Some say buns have yeast, cakes don't - some say buns have fruit and icing, and cakes are largely held to have a sponge base. But for every idea we can think of several exceptions (we are paid to think, it's our job!) (ok, but not about cakes...)Can anyone help us? Does anyone really KNOW?

I'd have said a bun was just a small, self-contained cake. Or, in south Yorkshire, a 'bread bun' is what is known elsewhere as a roll or 'bap'.

Yeah - I'd put buns in the bread and/or savoury category whereas your cake would go into the sweet category.

ah, the "cake can be cut into portions" argument - you are siding with my mother, aka Queen of the Night, then. I know the bread bun thing, and have always assumed they are what are thrown at bun-fights!

I think my mother's take on it is that cake is what she bakes herself, and 'bun' is what she buys from the baker or supermarket. Somehow, I don't think that's a definition that you'll find anywhere else...

Dictionary definitions (from Oxford English Dictionary):

Cake: Sweet, usually unleavened (that means no yeast) bread with other ingreedients besides flour, e.g. currants spice, butter, eggs, sugar.
Bun: Small, round, sweet bread or cake with currants, etc.

As a cook's daughter, and lover of cakes, this pretty much matches my experience. I regard buns as being small, round lumps of sweet bread, usually with mixed fruit (currants, raisins, etc.). Because they are 'bread', they must be made with yeast. Cakes, IMHO, are often large enough to cut into pieces (rock cakes and fairy cakes are obvious exceptions) and are not made with yeast. If a 'cake' contains yeast, it's bread (e.g., 'tea bread', 'fruit loaf', etc.). Texture varies according to the method of making the cakes. Sponge cakes *should be* light with an open texture. Fruit cakes are usually close textured, sometimes to the point of heaviness.

Sounds pretty definitive to me - QotN mutters something about "bun cases", as she has an (understandable) northern hatred of fairy cakes, she makes butterfly buns, chocolate buns and fruit buns etc made with a sponge mix in individual cases - are they fairy cakes?

as a general rule i would say that if you ate a whole cake in one go you would certainly be sick unless you were very practised at it. if you ate a whole bun in one go you would still have room for a packet of crisps and a coke.

Cakes are large or medium sized cake like things.
Buns are small (sometimes tiny) cake like things.
Muffins are bread things (also called buns, baps and barm cakes).
American muffins are queen cakes.

crikey phil - written like a true authority! But what's the queen cake thing? Is that what Americans call 'em or is it like a queensize bed?

Unleavened?

But I always put either self-raising flour or baking soda in to make a cake rise.

Surely this is leavened.

Yeast effectively does exactly the same thing. Ie. release carbon dioxide upon warming to effect rising of said cake/bun/muffin/bagel.

Isn't a queensized bed what people call their beds when they don't want to admit that it's just a normal double bed?

It's the way I tell em

The queen cake thing was what a large food retailer that I used to go and get lunch from started calling those huge bun things (american muffins) stuffed full of fruit (blueberry, cherry) or chocolate (choc chip).

I did think of iced buns today but then recall they used to get called iced fingers as well (the light fluffy bread finger roll type thing with a stripe of white icing on top)

Cakes are how you receive your cannabis

Buns are what you watch wriggling down the High Street.

Crumpets and muffins are a different issue altogether.



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