Caraway seed cake Caraway seed cake Seed cake is a traditional British cake flavoured with caraway or other flavourful seeds. Caraway seeds have been long used in British cookery, and at one time caraway-seed biscuits were prepared to mark the end of the sowing of the spring wheat. These particular biscuits later evolved into this distinctively flavoured tea cake. James Matterer reports that recipes for seed cake are found in A.W.'s "Book of Cookrye" (1591) and "The English Huswife" by Gervase Markham (1615). The cake was popular in the 1700s, and through the Victorian era. Recipes for it are included in many early
Marble cake Marble cake A marble cake is a cake with a streaked or mottled appearance (like marble) achieved by very lightly blending light and dark batter. It can be a mixture of vanilla and chocolate cake, in which case it is mainly vanilla, with streaks of chocolate. Other possibilities are strawberry or other fruit flavors, or (particularly in marbled coffee cakes) cinnamon or other spices. The first print references to marble cake begin appearing in the last quarter of the 19th century. One popular variation of this recipe during Victorian times was “Harlequin cake,” which was baked with checkerboard patterns. Early