Pontefract cake Pontefract cake Pontefract cakes (also known as Pomfret cakes and Pomfrey cakes) are a type of small, roughly circular black sweet measuring approximately 2 cm in diameter and 4 mm thick, made of liquorice, originally manufactured in the Yorkshire town of Pontefract, England. The original name for these small tablets of liquorice is a "Pomfret" cake, after the old Norman name for Pontefract. However, that name has fallen into disuse and they are now almost invariably labelled "Pontefract cakes". The term "cake" has a long history. The word itself is of Germanic origin, from the Germanic "kakâ" (cook). The exact
Pontefract Pontefract Pontefract is a historic market town in West Yorkshire, England, near the A1 (or Great North Road) and the M62 motorway. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is one of the five towns in the metropolitan borough of the City of Wakefield and has a population of 28,250, increasing to 30,881 at the 2011 Census. Pontefract's motto is "Post mortem patris pro filio", Latin for "After the death of the father, support the son", a reference to the English Civil War Royalist sympathies. At the end of the 11th century, the modern township of Pontefract consisted