Plain Cakes and Cakes with Fruit

Many of these simple cakes have English origins. Brought over by the settlers, cakes baked in the colonies were likely to be plain, since the rigors of home life did not allow for elaborate sweets. Popular varieties in America’s early days included pound cake, spongecake and gingerbread. Other cakes, like the simple but wonderfully buttery nut-topped blitzkuchen (“lightning cake”), show Germanic origins, as does gingerbread.