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 baking for my grandchildren’s school fete this week and when I asked the organiser what kind of cakes they’d like everything they asked for was very traditional.

Mountstevens Bakery in Bristol used to do what they called a Congo bun. It was a fruit bun with white icing on the ttop.The closest I've found is Greggs Belgian bun, but their icing is lemony.

My late nan was a school dinner lady and made most of the things mentioned here at home as well. Her specialty was big trays of gypsy tart, which would be sliced so that there was a few pieces in the middle with no crusts. As a greedy child, getting one of those that was mostly sugar and a little bit of pastry was the dream. I've still got her recipe but havent been able to bring myself to make it yet since we lost her.

She would make manchester tarts, iced buns, school cake, rice krispie slabs, biscuits, fairy cakes, sausage rolls, gingerbread, viennese biscuits, Christmas cakes. All using her old fashioned scales with the little brass weights shaped a bit like chess pieces and her food processor that was older than me. She kept a tub full of home made biscuits in her kitchen and every visitor would be sent home with some in a plastic bag whether they wanted some or not!

I miss her a lot. Thank you for the thread, it's brought back some happy memories of her in her kitchen, which was always her domain.

Tiny Hovis 😃 With HOVIS baked into the side. I used to love playing with these when I was a child. Sliced it to make tiny sandwiches for my teddies.

I saw some really nice looking German biscuits in Lidl bakery the other week, I haven’t had one in years and I’m kicking myself for not getting one! My granny always used to bring me one when she took me swimming for a “shivery bite”

You're right, of course - you sandwich them with jam before icing! My Mum would be tutting (and secretly extremely pleased to get one over on me).

We have that Russian Slice here in Ireland, but it's called Tipsy cake. You might find it under that name?

yes! we were completely entranced by these wee wonders, tiny slices, magic !

We used to get bath buns from a proper old school bakery in north London. Loved them!

We used to get something called a Domino cake from City Bakeries in Glasgow. I'd love to find out if anywhere else still makes them. If not, I'll settle for a pineapple tart!

I'd totally forgotten about the tiny Hovis loaves.

There’s a brilliant Jane Brocket book called “Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer” that is all about the nostalgic food in children’s books (Enid Blyton etc). It is brilliant - all rock cakes and tea parties and Pippi Longstocking.

I'm sure one of the big coffee chains still does tiffin. And indie bakeries.
I have a bakery near me that does gingerbread men, simnel cake and rum babas. They also make bread pudding from their own left-over bread. It's like dark matter and, because they only do it when there's the right sort of bread left over in the right quantities, it has semi-mythical status.

Greggs still do a good Belgian bun, IMO. I also like that they're regional; when I visit my friend in Cardiff we always go and get Welsh cakes, and near me in North London they do Tottenham cake.

I like a modern pimped-up cupcake, but I do also sometimes fancy a little fairy cake with a small amount of icing and a modest decoration, like a tiny shower of chocolate 'bits' (don't know what they're called; like hundreds and thousands but chocolate).

Baynes cream cookies!

My best friend brought round the holy grail of buns the other day.

We’d talked about (Shropshire) butter buns we’d had as kids and how you just can’t find good ones locally any more. The market sells them but they’re nowhere near as good as they were back then.

She found some in a cafe in Ludlow that looked really good and bought all that they had left. We had 2 each and they were amazing 🤤

I love London cheesecake (nothing like modern cheesecake) and haven't seen one in 20+ years. If any bakers out there will mail order me a couple pm me!!!

Jennalong I used to work in a bakery that sold the faggots.....you aren't from Swindon by any chance???

@DanceToThisBeatForevermore

My local bakery house place (called the bake house) makes tiffin daily, my favourite

Taleipsemum.....i think I've died and gone to heaven!!!! That's the sort od bakery I remember from my childhood......thank you!!!!

By Paris buns I think you mean choquettes.

Coeliac disease means I miss more but I’d love to old fashioned fresh cream buns.

I miss lardy cake and Chelsea buns. The bakers used to have a very unique smell. There was one near my secondary school and you could also get cups of hot soup ❤️

I also thought of tipsy cake when reading about Russian Slice - sounds like the same delicious, stodgy treat! One of my very favourites, but not often seen these days.

The other bakery near me, parsons, does bread pudding thankfully. Now if only they would sell London cheesecake then everyone here should visit

I watched Jamie Oliver on YT making beigels, it looked easy, then John Kirkwood making crumpets, he said, make these and you will never buy a crumpet again, or words to that effect. They looked so good, buttery goodness, want one now.

Chorley cakes! I was struggling to remember, larger flatter more solid than eccles cakes, warm with a blob of Nestles? tinned cream on, at our Gran’s and a special treat, on making a pot of tea enough to quench the thirst of the whole street, before it ‘brewed’ to the colour of the teapot, would pour us a cup, then tip it into the deep saucer for us to slurp, with the dire warning, “do not tell your mother” a quiet rebellion
Life’s simple pleasures, tea and cake.

then John Kirkwood making crumpets, he said, make these and you will never buy a crumpet again,

Rick Stein said that the other week as well.