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a sweet, baked, breadlike food, made with or without shortening, and usually containing flour, sugar, baking powder or soda, eggs, and liquid flavoring.
a flat, thin mass of bread, especially unleavened bread.
pancake; griddlecake.
a shaped or molded mass of other food:
a fish cake.
a shaped or compressed mass:
a cake of soap; a cake of ice.
Animal Husbandry. a compacted block of soybeans, cottonseeds, or linseeds from which the oil has been pressed, usually used as a feed or feed supplement for cattle.
to form into a crust or compact mass.
to become formed into a crust or compact mass.
a piece of cake, Informal. something easily done:
She thought her first solo flight was a piece of cake.
take the cake, Informal.

to surpass all others, especially in some undesirable quality; be extraordinary or unusual:
His arrogance takes the cake.
to win first prize.

Contemporary Examples

Haiti’s Adoption Free-for-All Elizabeth Foy Larsen January 24, 2010
Who Is Behind Gaza’s Mass Execution? Jesse Rosenfeld July 31, 2014
Inside a Russian-Occupied Police Station in Ukraine David Patrikarakos April 12, 2014

Historical Examples

Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau Honore de Balzac
The Man from the Bitter Roots Caroline Lockhart
The Tent Dwellers Albert Bigelow Paine
‘My Beloved Poilus’ Anonymous
Frontier Boys in the South Seas Wyn Roosevelt
Our Casualty And Other Stories James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln Charles L. Marson

noun
a baked food, usually in loaf or layer form, typically made from a mixture of flour, sugar, and eggs
a flat thin mass of bread, esp unleavened bread
a shaped mass of dough or other food of similar consistency: a fish cake
a mass, slab, or crust of a solidified or compressed substance, as of soap or ice
have one’s cake and eat it, to enjoy both of two desirable but incompatible alternatives
(informal) go like hot cakes, sell like hot cakes, to be sold very quickly or in large quantities
(informal) piece of cake, something that is easily achieved or obtained
(informal) take the cake, to surpass all others, esp in stupidity, folly, etc
(informal) the whole or total of something that is to be shared or divided: the miners are demanding a larger slice of the cake, that is a fair method of sharing the cake
verb
(transitive) to cover with a hard layer; encrust: the hull was caked with salt
to form or be formed into a hardened mass
adj.
n.

What man, I trow ye raue, Wolde ye bothe eate your cake and haue your cake? [“The Proverbs & Epigrams of John Heywood,” 1562]

Originally (until early 15c.) “a flat, round loaf of bread.” Piece of cake “something easy” is from 1936. The let them eat cake story is found in Rousseau’s “Confessions,” in reference to an incident c.1740, long before Marie Antoinette, though it has been associated with her since c.1870; it apparently was a chestnut in the French royal family that had been told of other princesses and queens before her.
v.

The female genitals (1940s+ Black)
A sexually attractive woman; fox (1940s+ Black)
(also cake-eater) A ladies’ man; dude: his brown hat, fixed square-shaped the way the cakes were wearing them (1920s+)
piece of cake (1910+)

see:

eat one’s cake and have it, too
flat as a pancake
icing on the cake
nutty as a fruitcake
piece of cake
sell like hot cakes
slice of the pie (cake)
take the cake