Cakes in cafes in older books

Sounds just like the contents of my baking press @upinaballoon

Here is Betjeman reciting Myfanwy

Oh Fuller’s Angel Cake, Robertson’s marmalade!

Betjeman

High tea is something you eat out* - a hotel round the corner offers "traditional Scottish High Teas" - a main course like fish and chips followed by chunky scones and cakes. The evening meal at home is just tea and afternoon tea is in nice cafes, daintiness of cakes depending on the establishment - personally I would prefer a decent sixed scone/cake to lots of chocolate dipped strawberries.
*often with your Gran on a Sunday in my experience

Myfanwy and Betjeman both loved Fullers angel-cake! 🍰 🍰 🍰

I remember reading about seed cake in lots of books, it seemed the last resort, nothing else to offer type of cake. I’ve never seen one in real life but always imagined it like those budgie treats made of sesame seeds but in cake form!

I love seed cake - and it's nothing like budgie treats It's made with carraway seeds, not sesame!

Every word on this thread has been rivetting, except a prat called Upinaballoon spoke about small tiny cakes, and surely Barbara Pym and J.B.Priestley and John Betjeman and Alan Bennett must have taken tea together sometime, somewhere, and please don't spoil the idea by telling me their ages don't all match. Did John Betjeman ever mention a Fuller's walnut cake , which had white icing on it?

I can't say. I only ever met the term 'High Tea' in Enid Blyton books.

I always take High Tea to mean the end of day meal for people who eat their main meal in the middle of the day - so it’s solid but not the biggest meal of the day.

Soery, first sentence should read I'd really love a kunzle cake although I'd never heard of them...

If really love a kunzle cake although is never heard of them. And I'd love to read Six Cousins at Mistletoe Farm again!

Just to clarify, my comments about high tea are referring to a period between about 1880 and 1930 when Bennett and Priestley set their works, since the theme of the thread is food in "older books".

As an aside, it's interesting how quickly food trends come and go these days.... is Mexican food old hat now?

Gaspode - this was our idea of tea too.

I might have had kunzle cakes, but if so, I didn't know that's what they were called.

We never talked about high tea. Scottish family, moved to Yorkshire in 1971, and we had tea as our main meal in the evening. We ate between 6 and 6.30, whenever my Dad got back from work, and we had a main course, usually hot in the winter, often cold in the summer, followed by bread, butter, jam etc and also at least one plate of cake or chocolate biscuits - i.e. something fancier than bread and butter. All washed down with tea. It was extremely substantial. As none of us were engaged in vigorous manual labour, I don't know how we didn't all become obese. I suppose my brother and I were growing teenagers and my Mum was a primary school teacher, so on her feet most of the day. My Dad's job was not entirely sedentary but he certainly spent a lot of time behind a desk, and his waistline expanded a lot during my childhood.

At some point subsequently my parents changed what they ate in the evening but they still call it tea, even though tea is not served with it any more. They now have a main course (usually meat or fish with potatoes and vegetables), washed down with wine (Dad) or water (Mum), followed by a pudding. The cake etc still puts in an appearance, but it's usually served at lunchtime these days, or with a cup of tea mid-afternoon (or both).

Anyway, after that rivetting account , here's a picture of Kunzle Cakes I found courtesy of Google. It's from this blog. www.davidpilling.com/wiki/index.php/Kunzle If I ever had these, it must have been when I was very young, as I don't remember them at all.

I was hanging out with the wrong nuns in the eighties, clearly, @StrychnineInTheSandwiches!

And yes, poor red-faced, bustling Linnie, who’s passionate about music and poetry, but can only indulge it in secret on Cyril’s radio because her Big Farmer husband controls the family set in the evenings, and who is stuck with running an ancient farmhouse with no hot running water or electricity, and six quarrelling children. And who, when she gets a chance to move to a convenient modern house, is guilted out of it by her kids…

In Staffordshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire high tea invariably included a cooked dish.

As one with family from those parts - we never made a distinction, between hot and cold food. The evening meal was tea whether it was a meat pie, or boiled ham. (And still is for tea me - whether it's quiche and salad or shepherd's pie.)

Afternoon tea wasn't something you ate at home - it was when you went out to a posh tea room.

In Staffordshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire high tea invariably included a cooked dish. This is what differentiated it from "tea", which was usually cold things with bread, eg sliced tongue, brawn, or perhaps a slice of gala pie.
The hot dish might be a Barnsley chop, or devilled kidneys, a meat pie or liver and bacon or something similar. There would also be bread & butter, a slice of cake, possibly a muffin (completely different from American muffins) or pikelet.

Arnold Bennett's Clayhanger series and Anna of the Five Towns series, and J. B. Priestley works have frequent references to similar meals.

Yes, @Negligee, Blyton's disdain was clear. I seem to remember their flighty mother came in for the most scorn as opposed to capable, high tea procuring, country mum! Poor woman's house had just burnt down and her kids had been shipped off to another county.

Don't go overboard with them @upinaballoon they impart much flavour

Which convent/order, @StrychnineInTheSandwiches? The Presentation convent that educated me had terrible food, the odd time I ate anything there.

Yes, a couple of the local hotels did afternoon tea, at least before Covid.
Small dainty sandwiches, small sausage rolls and then the three tiered cake stand. All for an inclusive price per head, so you could scoff all the cakes because you had paid for them.