Five questions about cakes – Quick Quiz answers

By British Expat, 29 September 2013

We asked you five quick trivia questions about cakes. Here are the answers:

1. What fruit-and-marzipan cake, linked with Easter, shares its name with a pretender to the English throne?
   Simnel cake, a fruit cake with a middle and top layer of marzipan, often served with 11 marzipan balls as decoration to represent the Apostles minus Judas Iscariot (or 12, with Jesus). It’s popularly believed that Lambert Simnel (who claimed to be the Earl of Warwick and challenged Henry VII’s throne in 1487) invented the cake, because Henry pardoned him and employed him in his kitchens. However, simnel cakes were recorded under that name long before.
2. Unlike most cakes, Pontefract cakes aren’t made from flour and eggs. So what are they made of?
   Liquorice. This favourite Yorkshire treat is a sweet rather than a cake. They’re stamped with a stylised image of Pontefract Castle, usually with a raven but sometimes with an owl; until the mid-twentieth century all the stamping was done by hand.
3. McVities went to a tribunal in 1991 to ensure that VAT would not be payable on Jaffa Cakes. Are Jaffa Cakes cakes or biscuits?
   They’re cakes, as McVities argued and the tribunal accepted, and therefore attract no VAT. Chocolate-covered biscuits are considered to be luxuries and therefore VATable.
4. Which cake is traditionally supposed to have been invented because Mary, Queen of Scots didn’t like cherries?
   Dundee cake. The baker substituted almonds as an ingredient and as a decoration. But it wasn’t until the 19th century that Dundee-based marmalade makers Keiller’s started mass-producing them under the name. Apparently they’re a great favourite of the Dalai Lama.
5. Which The Apprentice candidate explained in 2008 that “people in a size 16 and 32 dress are size 16 and 32 for a reason. They love cake”?
   Raef “The spoken word is my tool” Bjayou (undoubtedly the best turned-out of any Apprentice candidate ever) when choosing items to sell at a wedding exhibition at the National Exhibition Centre. Large-sized wedding dresses were one of the options available; Raef suggested wedding cakes would be a useful back-up.

How did you get on? Why not let us know?