Conversation:

Just to correct a minor omission. In my extensive cake-oriented experience, fruit cakes do fairly often contain apple, and I even once made one with mango in it (thanks, Delia).

But most importantly, I don't know how you could have forgotten the essential contribution made to the fruitcake world by lemons - if only in their hellspawned and godforsaken incarnation as "candied peel". After all, what is a fruitcake if it doesn't have bits you have to pick out of it at the teatable, causing a marathon shouting match between you and your mum? Ah, childhood memories...

The best fruitcakes always contain cherries. Not the kind you buy from a fruit shop, but the kind that have undergone some kind of genetic tinkering to make them bright pinky read and sticky and completely unfruitlike.

As an aside, any entry on cakes would be incomplete without a mention of the bizarre non-cake cake that is the Pontefract Cake. Makes you wonder what the rest of the food in Pontefract is like.

Yes, small black discs of vulcanized rubber do not constitute a cake, no matter what the Pontefractians (or should that be Pontefractals?) say.

Cattle cake is another one to be avoided. Well, unless you're a cow.

I don't know about cattle cake, but cow PIES should be avoided even if you ARE a cow.

Lardy cake must win a prize for being the most unappetisingly named.

It is time to out the pseudo cakes! Name them and shame them, I say.

1) 'Fish cake' No! Fish, maybe- cake, absolutely not!
2) 'Jaffa cake' No! They're delicious little beasts, but they're biscuits and they know it!
3) 'Kendal Mint cake' No! How is this a cake? It's a big mint! Get a grip, Felicity, if this really is your doing.

Eccles cakes aren't particularly cakey. Very nice though.

Does Bluebottle know about this? Perhaps best not to mention it - could dissilusion the poor lad for life about his friend's cooking skills.