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The history of our favourite treat in 30 fascinating facts

A report last week from the Faculty of Dental Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons said that our “cake culture” was fuelling obesity and dental problems.

During the Middle Ages, the word cake meant a flat round of bread baked hard on both sides.

In English, the word cake comes from the Old Norse term kaka. The Latin word for cake is placenta and derives from the Greek plakos, meaning flat.

Contrary to popular belief, Marie Antoinette didn’t say “Let them eat cake!” on the eve of the French Revolution in 1789. The phrase is now believed to have been uttered by Maria Theresa of Spain, the wife of Louis XIV, some 100 years earlier.

Jaffa Cakes are technically classified as cakes, not biscuits. The British Government tried to have Jaffa Cakes reclassified as biscuits in 1991, and thereby liable for VAT rather than being zero-rated. McVitie’s produced a special 12-inch Jaffa Cake to demonstrate its “cakiness” at the VAT tribunal and won the case.

The key difference between cakes and biscuits is that cakes go hard when stale, whereas biscuits go soft.

Cakes are traditionally round, symbolising the cyclical nature of life, the sun and the moon.

The proverb “you can’t have your cake and eat it” first appeared in the early 16th Century.

But “a piece of cake” wasn’t coined until the 20th Century.

An Australian made a junk food cake made up of fare from McDonald’s, KFC and Domino’s. It contained a staggering 54,000 calories.

The British cake market is worth £1.2 billion a year.

Students at an Indonesian culinary school made the world’s tallest cake in 2008, a staggering 108ft high. It weighed 20 tonnes and included 3500lb of sugar, 3500lb of margarine and 7000lb of eggs.

A slice of Battenberg cake . . . and some tasty Jaffas.

But with the Great British Bake Off about to hit our screens again, our interest in cakes has never been greater. Here’s a look

at our scrummiest treat.

The world’s most expensive cake cost $35million and included 10 sapphires as well as necklaces, rings and bracelets.

Queen Victoria was one of the first people to have pure white icing on her wedding cake. That’s why it’s called “royal icing.”

In Medieval times, parties would be held to mark the end of Christmas and livel birds and frogs would burst out a giant cake.

Nearly a third of American school districts have banned bake sales because of anti-obesity regulations.

The first reference to a birthday cake came in 1785.

Baked Alaska was given its name by New York restaurant Delmonico’s in 1876 to celebrate Alaska’s annexation. But it was invented by eccentric physicist Count Rumford who was experimenting with dessert techniques.

Iain Watters went down in