FACTORALY - E57 CAKE

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Bruce has his. Simon eats his Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

good morning bruce hello simon how are you today i'm very well you're looking in fine fettle and fabulous as always well thank you i'm glad i'm looking better than i feel you're looking um equally fantabidosi well yes i i you know i i do i do all my makeup and hair and stuff before i get on these things it shows it shows yeah yeah it's really i mean you need to make yourself presentable for an audio only format don't you i i believe so yeah i one has to rise to the occasion. And literally sometimes rise, especially when it involves baking powder and flour. Oh, look at that. How contextual a link was that? Wonderful. Because you know, and I know, and they know what we're talking about this week. We all know, but we don't know that they know that we know, you know?

So before we launch into the specifics of a topic, let's broaden out and say, hello everyone, welcome to... Factorily. For the uninitiated... He's Simon Wells. And he's Bruce Fielding. Is that confusing? Maybe.

We are both professional voiceover artists. That we are. We read scripts. We produce audiobooks. We make advertising, campaign-y stuff with our voices. Absolutely right. That's what we do. We are bubbly when we need to be bubbly, and we are calm and sincere and authoritative when we need to be. Indeed. Absolutely. We are all of those things and more. And when we're not doing that, we come together and talk about interesting fun facts and useless information

and trivia and knowledge because we are both nerds. Yes, we are. So cake. Right. Yes, there you go. So for those of you who are listening, for those of you who just read the title,

this week's episode of Fact Orally, we are going to be talking about cake. Now, the thing is, as voiceovers, one of the things that we have to watch out for is a thing called mouth clicks yes and that's the kind of noise that you make when you're salivating yes this episode is going to be tricky it's going to be tricky so yeah mouth clicks can come from drinking too little drinking too much eating too eating too much, eating the wrong things just before you hit record. Or thinking about cake. Just thinking about food can make you salivate. So apologies if we're a little bit clicky.

Yes. So cake, where does it all begin, Bruce? Where should we start? It's probably egyptian this is our quote of the month at the moment isn't it everything we've researched recently goes back to egypt so go on what evidence have you got for suggesting that cakes go back to egypt do you know what i was hoping that you would have researched that darn it right okay so what i've got is not ancient Egypt, actually.

Oh, gosh. I thought maybe you'd found something that I hadn't. The idea, so specifically, I'm going to talk about one of the most famous types of cake, which is birthday cakes. I think we mentioned previously on our episode on birthdays that the idea of a birthday can be traced back to ancient Egypt because it's the day that a chap became the pharaoh on that day he allegedly became a god and you celebrated that day as his day of birth of rebirth that's kind of where birthdays came from okay they didn't have cakes but the ancient greeks did so they carried on that idea of a birthday and they were sort of the first civilization other than egypt to really celebrate a birthday yes and they're the ones who came up with the idea of having a cake to go with it so the earliest record of a cake i could find was in ancient greece because of that right they had a cake called a plaku or a placus not sure

whether you pronounce the s or not which was derived from the greek word plakos meaning flat because cakes back then were flat they weren't risen fluffy spongy things that we recognize today interestingly enough same root as placenta exactly yeah right so so the greeks have had plakus or plaku the romans later on had a cake they carried on that word and had a placenta and then that that was a sort of a flat round splodgy looking cake yes and that's where we get the word for placenta yeah isn't that um appealing yeah okay my mouth has now dried up so yes it might go back to egypt it definitely goes back to greece it was certainly there in the roman times um they were all flat they were usually relatively savory they they you know

to make a cake rise to be big and light and fluffy you have to put some kind of raising agent in whether that's baking powder or just incredibly well whisked eggs yes you know beating air into eggs makes the mixture fluffy and light and rise in in the oven in talking which you know what they used to use instead of a an egg whisk to beat egg whites no they used to crack the egg white into a sponge and then and then like squeeze the sponge to kind of like and that sort of whips up the egg white yes of course it would i can picture that process right now yes how interesting that brings an entirely new meaning to sponge cake doesn't it i suppose it does i mean that's what this podcast is all about is finding useless pieces of information and

dropping them in willy-nilly such as the fact that the word cake uh originally is a mixture of swedish danish german so swedish, German. So Swedish have kaka. Danish have kajé. Right. Probably a bad pronunciation. Germans have kuchen. Very good. You sort of mix those things together with a bit of eggs and flour,

and you get the English word cake. Yes. Which records say we in England have been sort of making cakes in one form or another since about the 1100s, really. And we still have them now. Well, I mean, Shakespeare mentions cakes, obviously quite a lot. Yes. Including the very famous cakes and ale. Cakes and ale. Tell me about that. That sounds like my kind of treat. So cakes and ale was something that was said by Toby Belch in Twelfth Night. Oh, really? Yes, so Cakes and Nails is a Shakespeare,

yet another Shakespeare quote that we use on a daily basis. Well, I've never used that on a daily basis. I didn't actually know that was a quote. Did you not? No, what does it refer to? It's like, you know, everything is Cakes and Nails. Everything is great. We've got the best of everything.

Oh, I see. Everything is coming up gravy kind of thing. Yes, or roses. Or roses, either or. Oh, I see. Everything's coming up gravy kind of thing. Yes. Or roses. Or roses. Either or. Oh, interesting. Well, there you go. Thanks, Shakespeare.

I found several sources saying it's really hard to differentiate between cakes and bread. Yes. In its basic form, you know, historically, a cake was sort of a flat, bland thing. Yes. In its basic form, you know, historically, a cake was sort of a flat, bland thing. Yes. Until people started chucking sugar and nuts and fruit and chocolate and things into it. So in your view, is brioche bread or cake? Oh, don't do this to me. I had a really hard time with this one.

It's a sweet bread. Okay. Because Marie Antoinette didn't say say let them eat cake she said let them eat brioche did she really is that right which has been translated as let them eat cake ah but it's like they haven't got any food they're starving they can't afford any bread well let them eat brioche oh i really expected a traditional french gateau oh yes oh i love a gato love a gato which apparently is just french for cake no but no but cake is cake i mean but gato so gato um a gato is usually um a layer cake yes which just means you get sponge buttercream sponge buttercream sponge possibly icing oh yeah

definitely icing the icing on the cake in fact another expression that we yeah maybe the cherry on the cake as well yeah absolutely maybe you can have your cake and eat it i know there's so many of them aren't they yeah i mean you know things like selling like hot cake do hot cakes actually sell i don't know i've never looked into that. I'd much prefer a cold cake to a hot cake. Now, you questioned whether a brioche is a cake or is it really a bread. There are very, very sort of thin lines in some of these things. I've trawled through quite a few definitions of a cake. Yes. And site after site after reference after reference said there is very little difference between bread, cake, biscuit, sweetbreads, etc., etc.

Unless you're the UK government, of course. Go on. I feel you've got a fact for me. Well, I think everybody knows this one, but just in case you don't. Yes. So there's a sort of a biscuit called a Jaffa cake. Don't call it a Jaffa cake. Don't call it that. And the thing about biscuits and cakes in this country is tax laws are different for cakes and biscuits. And I think you don't pay VAT on cakes, but you do pay it on biscuits. That's right. I tried to look into the history of that. I

couldn't find it. So I think it's specifically chocolate biscuits. And Jaffa Cakes are essentially a little like sponge roundel with a layer of orange jelly and then topped off with a sort of like a chocolate topping. Hungry now. Yeah. And they decided that they didn't want to pay VAT because the VAT man said, it's a biscuit. And Jaffa Cakes said, no, it's a cake. It's a cake. So what they did was they took them to court. The government took McVitie's, I think it was.

McVitie's, that's right. Took to court. And McVitie's actually baked a large Jaffa Cake. Yeah. And said, look, it's a cake. And they said, the difference between this and a biscuit is that if you leave a biscuit out overnight, it's going to go all soggy. If you leave a cake out overnight, it's going to go crispy and hard. Yeah.

And if you did that with a Jaffa cake, it would go hard and crispy. Yeah. So technically, therefore, it was a cake. And therefore, technically, McVitie's didn't have to pay VAT. Exactly. didn't have to pay vat exactly it's only the size and shape and the way it's served that makes people think it's a biscuit because it is roughly the size and shape of any other of mcvitty's products it does look like a chocolate digestive or a rich tea um but yes that that specification of cakes are supposed to be soft and squidgy they go hard when they're stale biscuits the other way around

yeah exactly um and yet i've i've seen polls saying how highly up the uk's favorite biscuit list jaffa cakes are they shouldn't be there at all they shouldn't do you know about the caterpillar wars no go on so colin the caterpillar is a children's birthday cake that is sold by marks and sp Spencers, M&S. Yeah. And it's incredibly popular. Kids love Colin the Caterpillar. I've bought a few for my son in the past.

They're very nice. They are. However, other supermarkets thought, we could do that. Because why should we leave that all to M&S? So they decided to start making their own caterpillar cakes. And they made so many. So there's, I mean, you know, Waitrose being Waitrose have gone for caterpillar cake. Sainsbury's have got Giggles the caterpillar. Asda have got Clyde the caterpillar.

Morrison's have got Morris the caterpillar. and tesco has a fuzzy caterpillar cake that sounds like it's gone off and there was a there was a little bit of a dissension in the ranks when m&s got a bit upset about all these different caterpillar cakes yeah and that was resolved by them going do you know what we're not going to stop this we can't we can't we can't copyright caterpillar yes no you can't it's too too generic isn't it yeah i'm surprised no one decided to trump that and make a butterfly cake. Oh, I'm sure there are other insect cakes are available. Actually, talking of insect cakes, just very briefly, there's a sort of cake called the Kunga cake,

which is an African cake, which is made from squashed midges. Ew. Thatges. Ew. That sounds... Ew. You would think it would go down very well in Scotland, because they've got a lot of midges in Scotland. Wow. Can't be trying that.

Thank you. The other one, of course, if we're talking about party cakes is the cupcake yeah cupcakes were invented in 1796 really as long ago as that yeah by a woman called amelia simmons okay and they're originally called one two three four cakes oh i've heard of a one two three four cake yes uh that talks about the proportions of ingredients exactly you put it? Exactly. You put in one pound of something. A cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, and four eggs. And a cup of milk and some baking soda. A little bit like a pound cake that you sort of put in a pound of butter, pound of flour, et cetera, et cetera.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Exactly the same. Oh, so she invented the cupcake. Yeah, they kind of weren't that popular initially. I mean, they're all right. But they kind of blew up when they were featured. There's a place called the Magnolia Bakery featured in Sex and the City.

Right. And then suddenly cupcakes became the thing. And they've just sort of like gone ballistic. You can get cupcakes of all sorts. You can even get a periodic table of cupcakes. you oh yeah i'll put a picture in the show notes on factorily.com factorily.com on the blog there and you'll be able to see a picture of a periodic table of cupcakes does it contain each of the elements i think the uranium one would be a bit tricky that could be a bit dicey couldn't it really i'm going to assume assume it just has the elements sort of piped on the top in frosting.

Exactly, yes. It's just noted in text rather than any other way. I remember feeling really disappointed with cupcakes when I first had them because they have this beautiful, glorious, swirly, rich, sickly, sugary, colourful, flavoured icing on top, and then it's just a lump of sponge underneath. It's a bit dull. It is.

Sort of like a Victoria's. Well, not a Victoria's one. Victoria's interesting. Victoria's sponge named after Queen Victoria. Yes. And you were mentioning sort of like occasion cakes. Yes. Her daughter called Victoria.

Was she? Didn't know that. Learning something new. Yes. Her daughter, called Victoria. Was she? Didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Learning something new. Yes. She was the first person to have a cake, a wedding cake, that had tears in it, you know, like multiple levels. Oh, levels, yeah. Of cake.

Yeah. So, yeah, so that was invented sort of back in the late 19th century. Now, I've heard it said that the tiered wedding cake is based on the um the top of a particular church in london near fleet street called saint brides uh-huh um and if you look at it heck it just looks like a wedding cake it is you know decreasing sizes of layer upon layer upon layer in the spire of this this church and it has the name saint brides so put the two together that seems like a reasonable assumption that that that might have inspiration for it doesn't it yeah absolutely so cakes useful things uh useful yeah they are they are quite useful how how i mean how

well for for example if you if you want to escape prison right oh i see um well you see there are there are stories about about um saws and files and things being baked into cakes yes and people escaping that way yeah are they apocryphal well yes and no i mean there's there's a few there's a few stories so in 1804 I mean, there's a few stories. So in 1804 in America, there's a chap called William Blewett who was a pickpocket and housebreaker. And he actually didn't smuggle anything in in cakes. Right. But he noticed that a lot of his compatriots were smuggling in saws and files in gingerbread cakes.

Okay. compatriots were smuggling in saws and files in gingerbread cakes okay so being a an honest young chap only a pickpocket and housebreaker he basically grasped them up to to the to the prison authorities right and in as a as a reward for grasping up his cellmates he was given a pardon oh really yes oh so he really did escape by virtue of cake. He absolutely did. Wow. He absolutely did. That's great. There was another one in a bit sort of later on in 1909.

There's a chap called F.J. Humley who was given a couple of cakes by his wife. And the prison authorities noticed they were a bit heavier than they were expected to be. And one had like a white icing on and one had like a chocolate icing. Yeah. And then in each of these two cakes, was half of a 38 caliber revolver oh wow oh very good so that got

that got caught i mean and and the the last one i'm going to mention because this is a chap who has escaped using a cake right a chap called emin deera. I don't know if you've ever heard of Eamon de Valera. I haven't. He was the third president of ERA. Where's ERA? From Ireland. Oh, ERA. Right.

Yes. Do you call it ERA? Personally, I do. I'm not claiming I'm right, but that's how I've always pronounced it. Fair enough. So, yeah, he was president from 1959 until 1973. So he was president a long time.

Okay. And he was imprisoned because he took part in the Easter Rising. And he got hold of the jail chaplain's master key somehow and some candle wax and basically made an impression of the key in candle wax and then got that smuggled out. And then a copy of the master key was smuggled in by cake. Oh, wow. The first time he did it, it didn't work properly. But he did it a second time. He did it again. And the second time he did escape. Brilliant. So, yeah, I mean, there have been cases where people have used a cake to release themselves from prison. That's great. So when the Greeks adopted this idea of celebrating birthdays and occasions and they started making cakes, they had a moon cake.

I associate moon cakes as being a Chinese thing that's celebrated on the Mid-Autumn Festival. So the Greeks made this moon-shaped cake and offered it on a birthday as a peace offering to Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon. And they were the first people to put candles in the cakes. And when they lit the candles, that was signifying their wishes and their appeasing of the goddess votive offering exactly that yeah yeah see our previous episode on um where have we covered that oh it was on birthdays i think was it yes see our previous episode on birthdays there are other sorts of cake as well. Of course. I mean, heck, have you seen the internet?

There's hundreds of them. Well, yes. But, I mean, well, I'll put a full list on the blog of all the cakes that there are. It's ridiculous. There is a very, very long list of all the cakes in the world. Yes. But, you know, there are other things called cake like you can get you can get a cake of soap oh oh do you know what that hadn't even occurred

to me cakes of something yeah yes so so a cake of something is usually something which is then cut up into like for example you can get things like kendall mint cake which isn't actually cake not a cake no it's it's basically sugar but it's it's a thing that they make is a large piece right and then chop up into smaller pieces which they then sell as a small piece and right so a cake is sort of a whole thing exactly which is then chopped into small portions exactly so for example if you're making soap you'll make a large piece of soap yeah which is called a cake and then you divide that cake up into bars right cake can also be a verb can't it you can be caked in mud you can you can take yourself in something

so i wonder whether that refers to the idea of sort of putting icing over a cake it's been enclosed in the icing it's it hardens as i suppose mud would if you caked yourself in mud and then it dried and hardened yeah true you'd be caked yourself in mud and then it dried and hardened, you'd be caked like the icing on a cake. Pure speculation. If anyone knows the actual reason why we get caked in something, please let us know. And the other thing is, another inedible cake is urinal cake.

Oh, my goodness. You think outside of the box. There is no box for you. It's one of those things I loved about Frasier, which is that the very, very posh wife of Frasier's brother, their family made money selling urinal cakes. Oh, did they? Yes. That's great. I mean, they were originally formulated using fairly toxic stuff to get rid of all the nasty germs and stuff in urinals. Yeah.

I mean, they're just lumps of solid bleach, aren't they? Not just bleach. They were made of all sorts of horrible stuff. So one of the things that they are made of still today, or some of them are, is paradichlorobenzene. Who doesn't need some of that in their bowl? Which is toxic. Right. And what happens is when the water hits it or when you urinate on it or

just in the air yeah it will just dissolve right and and release a disinfectant i see that's how it works yes yes the other one you can't eat is a dance. Dance cake. Cake dance. Cake walk. Nope. Ever heard of a cake walk? Nope.

So a cake walk is a sort of a dance. Is it? And it used to be, I mean, it eventually became a specific sort of dance, a cake walk. Okay. But it was originally just an ordinary, like a dance competition. Yeah. And the winner would get a cake. Oh, great.

The other one you can't eat is a cake that doesn't exist. Well, that makes sense. So in 1996, a chap called Chris Morris had a TV show called Brass Eye. Right. And he invented a drug. He called it a made-up drug. Okay. Because he said it was made up of chemicals.

Right, fine. And he called it cake. Huh. And he said it had come from Prague. And he got famous people to take a stand on how terrible this made-up drug was. Right. He convinced Bernard Ingham, Bernard Manning, Noel Edmonds, Bruno Brooks, Rolf Harris, David Arness MP, all about that they should speak out on the nightmare of cake. Wow. But all of those people went on television on a documentary that Chris Morris made up. All about the horror and terror and the nightmare of this drug, which basically made you retain water so that your neck swelled up to practically suffocate you?

And he said it was a big drug. It was like the size of a cake. And it was bright yellow. This is just bizarre. I know. And people just fell for it. All these people speaking out against a made up drug. How very odd. Now, I had a look at, there's a recent fad of sculptured cakes. I don't know if you've come across this. Oh, yes. They're cakes that look incredibly realistically like other things.

Yes, yes, yes. incredibly realistically like other things yes and they they exist they consist well they consist of great big towers of sponge that are then meticulously carved into a specific shape and then wrapped in sort of sheets of i don't know if it's marzipan or sort of just icing you know we talked about wedding cakes the classic sort of wedding cake that's just wrapped around in that thick white icing that sort of comes in a sheet um and they're incredible they you know there are sort of youtube channels dedicated to these incredibly realistic things uh i saw one that was um a pair of trainers and this trainer looked so realistic you could not tell which one was the real shoe and which one was the cake until they got a big knife out and cut one of the shoes in half wow telephones electrical equipment um bags of crisps that look

so much like a bag of crisps until you take a knife to it and chop it in half and it's a cake it's just so bizarre and i'm quite fascinated with these and so is my son we just sort of watch these endless videos of item after item after item guess Guess the cake. Which one of these is the cake? Yes. It's great fun. There are other sorts of cake as well. Exceedingly good cakes. Oh, Mr Kipling.

Oh, he does make exceedingly good cakes. He does, doesn't he? But do you know we've never seen him or heard him? No, I suppose not. Oh, you're not. Oh, no. You're not going to tell me he doesn't exist. Well. You're not going to tell me he's a character. So it's a bit like the Plowman's Lunch. Right.

It was an invention. Made to sound quaint and relatable and cozy. It was invented by an advertising agency, so I'm very happy about that. Well done. It was Rank Hovis McDougall had an idea to sell cake, and they thought, well, the big cakes that we make don't sell that well, so

maybe what we should do is start selling smaller iced cakes. Yes. And so we need to create a brand for these smaller iced cakes. Right. And there's a planner at JWTt called stephen king not the writer the other one um and and he along with jeremy bulmore who's the creative director they came up with this idea of okay so we need a character to sell these cakes yeah and they

thought of a chap called kipling which is one of the one of the many names that they had. So they called him Mr. Kipling. And they launched this friend of Mr. Kipling, who would talk about the adventures of Mr. Kipling and how he made exceedingly good cakes. So we never know who Mr. Kipling is, what he looks like, what he sounds like or anything. All we know is the voice of a chap called James Hayter, who was an actor. Right. And he's the one who does that. Mr. Kipling does make exceedingly good cakes. Yes. Sounds a little like J.R. Hartley's fly fishing gentleman.

Yes. I mean, James Hayter was a proper actor. Right. And I'll put a link in the show notes to him actually getting it slightly wrong. Oh, OK. Kipling-related outtakes. Fun. wrong. Oh, okay. Kipling-related outtakes, fun. Yes, yes, absolutely. Great.

It's not always easy to make your own cake from scratch, but there are people, aren't there, who make stuff that shortcuts all that. Yes, certainly. So there's a wonderful product. I'd never, I mean, I'm aware of the idea of a cake mixture. You can open up a packet of cake mixture, which sort of has the flour, powdered eggs, powdered milk, et cetera, et cetera, in a box.

And that, you know, is the starter for your cake. In America, that's termed as cake in a box. All right, okay. And this actually came about during the Great Depression in America. You know, at a time when poverty was high, resources were low, And this actually came about during the Great Depression in America. At a time when poverty was high, resources were low, people were hungry, a particular company started manufacturing cake in a box.

They just put these very simple ingredients into a box, mass-produced it. It was quite cheap at the time, and it was a good, ready source of, well of well sugar essentially yes and a little bit of sustenance you know um and it was it was the first time cakes had been mass produced in in that way you know rather than sort of spending hours at home making it yourself all of a sudden it was it was ready mixed that carried over into the 40s it was sort of quite a staple of the 1940s kitchen advertised as a you know a labor-saving time-saving cost-saving thing you know uh into the early 50s as well sort of there was a a nasty chintzy series of advertising that sort of suggested uh madam have you got too much cleaning work to do around the house and haven't got time to make a cake here use this cake in a box um terrible but part way through the 50s it actually started to go in decline it turned out that people didn't really want cheap nasty instant cake mix they actually rather enjoyed the process

of making a cake and making it bespoke and making it look pretty and putting their their own talent into it so sales went down a bit. And people sort of started making more of their cakes, you know, doing more with icing and decoration and things like that. Or frosting if you're American. And then in order to counter that, the people who invented cake in a box also invented frosting in a can. Just to make it even simpler and, you know, still quite nice and decorative looking but still simple cheap instant when they first launched it it had everything in it so it had the powdered egg it had the the fats and all that stuff in it what you did was literally just

add water that was it that was it and you just whisk it up right what they found was that that wasn't very satisfying to the housewife because she didn't feel it she felt that she was basically just like rehydrating something yeah rather than actually making something making proper yeah so what they do is they took out all the powdered egg right and they took out the fat the soluble fat and so what they did was they made you put one egg you just had to crack an egg and put it into the mixture and like a tablespoon full of oil right so that gave you the fat and the egg okay so you felt as though you were contributing to the process of making um a cake that's excellent so it kind of feels it feels a bit

more homemade if you have to do something and add a natural ingredient or two natural ingredients to this mix. Yes, adding an egg rather than just pouring in water makes you feel like you've baked something. Yes, exactly. Interesting. Cool. What a marketing ploy. One of the most famous cake-in-a-box people was a person called Betty Crocker. Oh, yes. Who also, a bit like Mr Kipling, doesn't exist. No.

Sorry about that. Created by the Washburn Crosby Company in 1921 to give a personalised response to consumer product questions. Well, that's really sad. I'd always imagined Betty Crocker to be someone a bit like Mrs mrs beaton you know well yes exactly exactly i mean general mills uh had sort of started off with this like spoon with her name on it yeah and then there's a portrait of her that started appearing on on ads and stuff yeah and the character was developed sort of in 1921 the people at um general mills felt that housewives would want advice from a fellow woman. So the advertising department at General Mills convinced the board of directors to create this

personality that the women answering the letters could use in their replies. And they used the name Betty because it was a cheery,-American name yeah and incidentally the name Crocker was used in honor of William Crocker who was a Washburn Crosby company director creating Betty Crocker yeah and she's now like an American icon she's had cookbooks Betty Crocker's 101 delicious biscuit creations as made and served by well-known gracious hostesses famous chefs distinguished epicures and smart luminaries of movie land. Ooh! Punchy title.

Imagine going into a bookshop and asking for that. There was a cookbook, there was a radio show on NBC. I'm staggered. It's like, I don't know, you'll be telling me there's no such person as Aunt Bessie or Uncle Ben or Dr. Oatker. Sorry. I don't know about Dr. Oatker. Sorry.

I don't know about Dr. Oatker, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't exist either. I'm sad. I guess we've come to the bit where we have to talk about records. Yes, indeed. Now, when you go onto Google and you type in Guinness World Record cake, you actually get quite a lot of results regarding guinness cake oh wow okay um a good friend of mine used to make guinness cake and i was so uncertain about this at the time but it's glorious you just you make a regular sponge cake and you chuck some guinness in there and it it sounds gross but it's beautiful it comes out as

a really dark brown almost black cake you can totally taste the Guinness, but it doesn't counteract the sweetness of the cake. It's delicious. But that's just a little aside. It just made me think of it. There are some records regarding cakes, obviously. Of course there are. Give us a record, Simon. Okay, here's your first record.

The world's tallest cake was created in Jakartaarta indonesia in 2008 and this was this was made by the hakasemi nilasari culinary school for a christmas event and uh this cake was 33 meters tall sorry that's about three stories high yeah i know and nine meters wide No idea how it managed to stay up. Some statistics on this cake. It weighed 20 tonnes. The ingredients included 1,750 kilos of powdered sugar, 1,620 kilos of regular sugar, 1,620 kilos of margarine, 162 kilos of powdered milk,

243 kilos of powdered chocolate, 100 liters of liquid sugar and 3,240 kilograms of eggs. Blimey. I'd have been impressed with 3,240 eggs. Yes. But 3,240 kilograms of eggs. So, yeah, that's the world's tallest cake. Wow. Don't know how you'd go about cutting a slice of that. No, no, no. Mind you, then you want to top it with a few candles. You'd want to, wouldn't you? Ideally. Yeah. The record that I found for candles on a cake was the Sri Chinmoy Institution in New York. Right.

And to celebrate Sri Chinmoy's 85th birthday, they made a cake in 2016. And on top of it, they put 72,585 candles. How? Were they the world's smallest candles or was this a really big cake? I think it was a really big cake and they had a hundred people lighting them goodness me that's incredible it's a lot of candles that is a lot of cake and a lot of an enormous amount of candles can you imagine i mean the the the the wax melting onto the oh no imagine how bright that would be as well i'd be terrible terrible and the other one i found, we talked about cupcakes before.

There's a chap called Patrick Bertoli in 2012. Okay. He's got six minutes to eat as many cupcakes as he can. Right. Here we go. How many can you eat in six minutes? Okay, let's do some maths here. I don't know.

72 in six minutes. Really? 72 cupcakes six minutes. Really? 72 cupcakes. Ugh. I mean, I wouldn't want to eat five cupcakes in a row. No. Well, I think that's, I've only got crumbs left. Yes, my cake has fallen flat.

My facts have gone stale. So before we go, we should ask people to do things. We certainly should. You know, the podcasty things, those things. Those things, yes. So if you've enjoyed listening to this, if your stomach is rumbling from all the delicious facts that we have presented for you, please go ahead and give us a like

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