Cake

Cake (represented by several Hebrews words; see below). The Hebrews used various sorts of cakes; which was the form usually given to Oriental bread (2Sa 6:19; 1Ki 17:12). See LOAF. They were leavened or unleavened. They also offered cakes in the Temple made of wheat or of barley, kneaded sometimes with oil and sometimes with honey. For the purposes of offering, these cakes were salted, but unleavened (Ex 29:2; Le 2:4). In Jer 7:18; Jer 44:19, we read of the Hebrews kneading their dough "to make cakes to the queen of heaven", see ASHTORETH, which appears to have been, from early times, an idolatrous practice, and was also the custom of the Greeks and Romans. The ancient Egyptians also made offerings of cakes to their deities. In Ho 7:8, Ephraim is called "a cake not turned." This figurative expression illustrates the mixture of truth and idolatry (Jews and Gentiles among the Ephraimites) by dough baked on one side only, and, therefore, neither doughnor bread. See BREAD.

1. For secular Use. —The ordinary (wheaten) bread of the Hebrews certainly had the shape of flat biscuits; and as this has been already sufficiently discussed under the article BAKE, we will here consider only those finer sorts, which appear to have been of more artificial manufacture.' The terms for these are as follows: