I. cake 1 S2 W3 /keɪk/ BrE AmE noun
[ Date: 1100-1200 ; Language: Old Norse ; Origin: kaka ]
1 . [uncountable and countable] a soft sweet food made by baking a mixture of flour, butter, sugar, and eggs:
We had cake and ice cream.
a chocolate cake
2 . fish/rice/potato etc cake fish, rice etc that has been formed into a flat round shape and then cooked
3 . [countable] a small block of something
cake of
a cake of soap
4 . be a piece of cake spoken to be very easy:
‘How do you do that?’ ‘It’s a piece of cake! Watch!’
5 . take the cake ( also take the biscuit British English ) informal to be worse than anything else you can imagine:
I’ve heard some pretty dumb ideas, but that takes the cake!
6 . have your cake and eat it British English , have your cake and eat it too American English spoken to have all the advantages of something without its disadvantages
7 . a slice of the cake British English a share of the profit, help etc that is available:
Both companies expect to get a big slice of the cake.
⇨ sell like hot cakes at ↑ hot cake (1)
• • •
COLLOCATIONS
■ verbs
▪ make/bake a cake
Let's make a cake for his birthday.
▪ decorate a cake
We decorated the cake with strawberries and cream.
▪ ice a cake British English , frost a cake American English (=cover a cake with fine sugar mixed with a liquid)
She iced her own wedding cake.
■ phrases
▪ a piece/slice of cake
Would you like a slice of cake?
▪ a cake recipe
Do you have any good cake recipes?
▪ a cake tin British English , a cake pan American English (=that you bake a cake in)
Use a 20 cm cake tin.
▪ a cake shop
There's a very good cake shop in the market.
▪ cake mix (=a mixture that you buy in a packet and use for making a cake)
If I'm feeling lazy, I sometimes use a cake mix.
■ types of cake
▪ a birthday/Christmas/wedding cake (=a special cake for a birthday etc)
Lucy had twelve candles on her birthday cake.
▪ a home-made cake
Home-made cakes are much nicer than bought ones.
▪ a fruit cake (=one with dried fruit in it)
Fruit cakes keep for quite a long time.
▪ a sponge cake (=one made from flour, butter, sugar, and eggs)
It's best to eat sponge cakes on the day you make them.
▪ a chocolate/lemon etc cake (=a sponge cake with a chocolate etc flavour)
She'd baked a chocolate cake for me.
▪ a cream cake (=one with thick cream inside it)
I'll get fat if I eat any more cream cakes.
■ COMMON ERRORS
► Do not say ' cook a cake '. Say make a cake or bake a cake .
II. cake 2 BrE AmE verb
1 . be caked with/in something to be covered with a layer of something soft or wet that becomes thick and hard when it dries:
Our boots were caked with mud.
2 . [intransitive] if a substance cakes, it forms a thick hard layer when it dries