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?

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow You can still get these! I buy them every Christmas for everyones stockings. They go to family in OZ too!

Jap cakes .

Lengths of chocolate biscuit cake with icing sugar on top used to be sold in sandwich shops and cafes but I never see it these days

I've added all of these cakes, bakes and treats on to my pintrest board and I'll be blaming you all for the expansion of my hips.

Hazelmere Bakery in Grange Over Sands Cumbria is amazing for old fashioned and inexpensive glorious things like Rum BaBa
https://thehazelmere.co.uk/the-hazelmere-bakery-grange-over-sands/

Another jap cake fan here too. I was sure they used to have a hint of coffee to them so glad to see a PP mention that.

A local bakery (NE Scotland) occasionally has them and while I'm grateful for their interpretation, it's lacking the coffee and has too much chocolatey buttercream. Mustn't grumble, though!

Omg, I’m so jealous, I would’ve loved having a school dinner lady as my Nan (no offence to my Nan who made a lovely apple pie). The cakes they made were amazing, Gypsy tart and Manchester tart ooh and the pink blancmange were my faves and I always used to go up for seconds and thirds...(and fourths) greedy child that I was.

There's a recipe for them here, with pictures. Any help? https://www.carolinemakes.net/2012/11/jap-cakes.html

I use the BBC Good Food bread pudding recipe, more or less. Double the spice, little or no mixed peel, and no to the lemon - and nibbed sugar on top instead of demerara, for me - but that principle, at least.

Were the rock cakes and peppermint creams from the Peter Rabbit cookbook by any chance? One of my first baking memories too!

A Yorkshire bakery called Ainsley’s did amazing, ‘ginger buns’. Small, cylindrical cakes, slightly pudding like, strong ginger and very sweet. Bit like the ‘Jamaican ginger cake’ but more spongey and less syrupy. Delicious with a cup of tea or custard.

On the savoury front nothing beats Aberdeen rowies. Salty, buttery heaven!

Lovely, thank you! That recipe sounds excellent, just as I recall them.

I remember those! I think I went to the one in Headingley near Salvo's. There was a baker at Hyde Park too where I used to get custard slices sometimes. This was back in the 70s.

Yorkshire curd tarts... I can't remember the last time I saw one that wasn't in a branch of Betty's.

Pretty sure I saw these in Iceland.

I’ve looked everywhere for coconut strands ( we used to call them worms) so I could make a London cheesecake. My Dad used to love them and bring them back as a treat on a Friday night.
Cant find them anywhere.

When I had my first Saturday job there was a proper bakers next door that did (among other things) giant choice buns called elephant feet. You could have them filled whatever you wanted.
My friend and I would buy an elephant foot with crab paste to share at morning tea break.
You never see cherry cake any more: the sort with cherries in the sponge and in a pattern on top, but no icing.
Cream cakes generally seem to have gone out of fashion. When I was little the baker shop had a cold glass cabinet with cream cakes in that you could pick and they would fill up a box: things like eclairs, meringues, apple turnovers, strawberry tarts. I haven't seen a cabinet of individual cream cakes like that for years!

@shellyleppard

The very one !
Many moons ago my aunt worked at the pet store in the market !

Greggs bread pudding was fucking delicious. It's gone, never to return apparently 😪

We have a great bakery that dues the best iced fingers. It's the same bakery my nana used to buy them from for me in the early 80s. They are £1.20 each now though and ds and I could easily eat 3 a day if I could afford it, financially or physically. They have the perfect ratio of icing to bread. Luckily the bakery is closed on a Sunday and Monday and doesn't open until after 10am which is after I walk past and then by my afternoon walk past they have sold out. If I really want some I order them and they'll do me however many I'd like. They are a Friday treat usually.

I'm making butterscotch tart later this week. I've made school dinner cake before with the icing and sprinkles on top. And chocolate concrete. We had a fantastic pudding trolley at one of my primary schools. The best meringues-swirls like massive iced gems sandwich together with a little cream. My favourite day was pizza and meringue day.

I'm trying to eat less ultra processed food and it's a good excuse to make my own cakes and puddings. I'm trying to eat less in general and this thread is not helping!

Our local chocolate shop sells Japp cakes 😋

thanks to this thread I just ordered a teacake and a giant hotcross bun from Betty's tearoom

oh well

@Sarvanga38 thank you!

To another pp - My mum used to make melting moments, totally forgotten about those. And homemade macaroons with half an almond on top (not the French kind).

Our local baker sells them. I've not tried one but I have it on good authority that they are divine. I might have to buy one tomorrow to see for myself.

Vegetable bakes are sold in Iceland