Chocolate cake is made with chocolate. It can also include other ingredients.[1] These include fudge, vanilla creme, and other sweeteners. The history of chocolate cake goes back to 1764, when Dr. James Baker discovered how to make chocolate by grinding cocoa beans between two massive circular millstones.[2][3] In 1828, Coenraad van Houten of the Netherlands developed a mechanical extraction method for extracting the fat from cacao liquor resulting in cacao butter and the partly defatted cacao, a compacted mass of solids that could be sold as it was "rock cacao" or ground into powder.[4] The processes transformed chocolate from an exclusive luxury to an inexpensive daily snack.[4] A process for making silkier and smoother chocolate called conching was developed in 1879 by Rodolphe Lindt and made it easier to bake with chocolate, as it amalgamates smoothly and completely with cake batters.[4] Until 1890 to 1900, chocolate recipes were mostly for chocolate drinks,[4] and its presence in cakes was only in fillings and glazes.[5] In 1886, American cooks began adding chocolate to the cake batter, to make the first chocolate cakes in the US
Sponge cake is a light cake made with eggs, flour and sugar,[1] sometimes leavened with baking powder.[2] Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain.[3] The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first of the non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the English poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman (1615).[4] Still, the cake was much more like a cookie: thin and crispy. Sponge cakes became the cake recognized today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-18th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by English food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter to the traditional sponge recipe, resulting in the creation of the Victoria Sponge.
A vanilla cake is a cake made with vanilla. It is often covered in icing. It is the most common cake. It is often eaten at weddings.[1]
