cake

1 /keIk/ noun

1 (C, U) a soft sweet food made by baking a mixture of flour, fat, sugar and eggs: a birthday cake | Would you like a slice of chocolate cake?

-compare biscuit

2 fish cake/rice cake etc fish, rice etc that has been formed into a flat round shape and then cooked

3 (C) a small block of something

(+ of): a cake of soap

4 be a piece of cake spoken to be very easy: "How do you do that?" "It's a piece of cake! Watch!"

5 take the cake AmE informal to be worse than anything else you can imagine; take the biscuit BrE: I've heard some pretty dumb ideas, but that takes the cake!

6 you can't have your cake and eat it spoken used to tell someone that they cannot have the advantage of something without its disadvantages

7 a slice of the cake a part of the money, help etc that is available for everyone to share

-see also: sell like hot cakes hot cake 2 verb

1 be caked with/in to be covered with a layer of something thick and hard: Look at your boots! They're caked with mud.

2 (I) if a substance cakes, it forms a thick hard layer when it dries