Old fashioned cakes and other bakery items.

[PamperMoose]

I love cakes but I find a lot of cakes now are crammed full of other sweet items like biscuits or covered in them. It’s a bit much for me.

It made me wonder what old fashioned cakes, pastries and savoury bakery items that are hard to find now.

I miss really good gingerbread men. I know that they’re still available if not so readily, but they aren’t as gingery as they used to be. And what’s happened to cream horns.

My Mother used to love something called Paris buns. They’re rather like a scone scattering with sugar nibs. Are those still around?

What old fashioned bakery items do you miss?

I'm going to make some this week. They were mentioned in a radio show I was half listening to at the weekend and made me want some!

We have a bakery on the other side of town with this kind of stuff. Love going there. The sign is painted rather than printed. A proper old bakery. It's been there forever.

Went there last week and had a London cheesecake. There were huge rum truffles rolled in chocolate sprinkles, school fudge cake, the biggest vanilla slice I had ever seen.

They also do savoury stuff. The pastries are great. All the sandwiches are great. You have to get there early to get a baguette.

It's always busy

There’s an amazing old school bakers about 29 miles from me. Fresh cream cakes, proper bread, proper carrot cake with cream cheese icing, sticky buns and gingerbread men as big as a toddler.
its fucking glorious.

not artisan, not wanky pretentious. Just good food.

I miss decent bakers

Gypsy tarts were absolutely lovely. Haven't seen those in years and years.

I remember them. No idea why they are called cheesecakes, but I used to get one on my way to my part time job after school (I grew up in South London)

but I really do think in most cases learning to bake them (or some of them) might be the only way to avoid the excessively sweet/overdecorated stuff.

I agree @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g. One of the reasons I bake. I love a traditional Victoria sponge, rock buns and Welsh cakes.

I like the plain sponge with pink icing on I think occasionally it has a little coconut on too

and an old fashioned white crusty roll eating one can be quite painful at times

We called them buns not cupcakes.
We made fairy buns a lot.. bit of butter cream .. then the circle cut out to make wings.
Or iced buns with icing and sprinkles.
Coconut macaroons using egg cup to shape.

We made fairy buns a lot.. bit of butter cream .. then the circle cut out to make wings.

That's a butterfly bun.

Agree with previous posters about Russian cake - I used to love that!

I love rock cakes too but they're so easy to make and best eaten fresh.

Scotland is the place to go for proper old school bakery items - fondant fancies, butterscotch tarts, pineapple tarts, strawberry tarts, empire biscuits, cream scones, marzipan fruits, custard doughnuts, custard slices... All incredibly sweet, but rarely an overloaded cupcake to be seen.

My mum makes what she calls Empire biscuits. Probably derived from an ancient recipe (she's 91 and has been making these all my life). I think decades ago she might have made the biscuit base but nowadays she uses M&S butter biscuits. All you do is spread a little glace icing on the biscuit and put a bit of glace cherry in the centre before the icing sets. Super simple.

Good cross post there! My Mum is indeed Scottish.

Iced bun, Chelsea bun, Belgian bun

We have an amazing bakery in our village. The huge soft Belgian buns with loads of icing are my particular favourite. Also the Chelsea buns, bread pudding and fresh cream jam doughnuts are delicious.
I can’t let myself go in there too often, as cakes are my downfall!

I remember Paris buns and bridge rolls (great for parties). Pineapple tarts, cream cookies (which are buns filled with cream and topped with icing sugar), rhubarb tarts, strawberry tarts, chocolate éclairs, vanilla slices, custard doughnuts, chocolate violets. They're all still available, but in a bakers shop in my home town hundreds of miles from where I live now

I miss Jane's Pantry and the bakers that was part of the Co-Op that did a cheesecake that tasted of cheese. It was very slightly lemony, and had sultanas in it. Mum used to go shopping every Saturday and buy us both a slice, that we'd eat watching TV when dad was at the rugby.
The closest I ever got to the taste as an adult was Starbucks Blueberry Cheesecake, but that's disappeared now as well.

Yes to proper Lardy (or Dripping) cakes that oozed when you bit into them.

I make a lovely Bread Pudding that is about a million calories a slice - haven't made it for years though.

Lardy cake and I think they're called London cheesecake with the coconut strands on 😋
Bread pudding 😋

I used to make these for parties. Two Royal Scot biscuits sandwiched together with jam, Iced on the top and decorated with either a glacé cherry or a jube jube.
Of course I can't get Royal Scot biscuits now, but I'll try the M&S ones, thanks.

Proper doughnuts, with jam, very heavy, quite stodgy. Never see them now

Also Im not from the right area but lardy cake. Was introduced to this many years ago during a holiday where they have them (west? north?) and recently found a bakery selling them in Wiltshire I think it was, a dried out, less fat version. Was quite sad

The bakers where I first had it, had them in a big metal tin, full of fatty sugary slices. Gorgeous.

Also Princess Slices, just sponge cake with pink icing on, in squares in the bakers in South London.

Kennedys (RiP) butchers christmas puddings. Not technically a cake but never bettered.

Oh god, bread pudding yes.

tiny wee HOVIS on a Friday for tea, with ham, chopped tomato, Branston pickle, typhoo tea in what seemed like an enormous Brown Betty tea pot, with ribbed knitted teacosy, ran home from school anticipating these little loaves

apple charlottes, have not seen them for years, small trough shaped pastry filled with stewed apple, piped cream on top then angelica flowers

Cornish splits, buns filled with jam and whipped cream, icing sugar on top we would lick off if unobserved.

real thin shortbread with real unsalted butter, the edges always slightly ‘caught’ they were the best bits.

Rock buns, fairy cakes, butterfly cakes, pale Christmas cakes, Simnel cake with marzipan apostles, Dundee cake, country fruitcake, sultanas in, sugar chips atop,
Be Ro original cookbook, Grantham gingerbreads and Parkin in Autumn, Welsh cakes, drop scones, pikelets on a griddle, Battenburg! loooong chocolate eclairs with a good crack, cottage loaf, japs, date&walnut loaf, Bara Brith, rum babas, custard tarts my favourite, Manchester tart, iced buns we called Sally Lunns,
the warm aroma from the corner bakery so enticing.

Why are so many bakers on a corner?

I take my wee tartan bunnet off to the Scottish baker who looked at some shortbread, and thought, 'This isn't sweet enough, Kenneth,' so sandwiched two together with jam, and thought, 'No, still no sweet enough for me,' so added some glace icing, tried it and thought, 'Aye, it's still lacking something...' And then put a jelly tot on the icing, and FINALLY HIS SWEET TOOTH WAS SATISFIED.

I think all Scottish bakers are actually related to dentists.

When I was a young 'un in North Devon in the 90s, Warrens Bakery the local chain did pasties that were lovely - beef, swede, potato, and full of black pepper. These days you wouldn't call them proper Cornish pasties as they weren't made across the border, and they were seamed at the top. But they were lush.

My sister would have a Trevisick's pie instead and idk what was in those but they don't seem to exist anymore.

Honourable mention to Devon splits they did as well, which do still exist but you rarely get. Like a big not very sweet bready kind of bun, with splits sliced into it filled with cream and some jam and strawberries.

oh god yes! I longingly googled Russian Slice a few years ago and found a bakery in the arse end Swansea or somewhere equally yikes-y and thought quite hard about taking a day trip there.

I still make empire biscuits (the biscuit base too). You can’t beat an empire biscuit.