I feel like I didn’t think this through.
In the US, cake is something you see at parties, right? You might occasionally get a slice in a bakery for a snack, but it’s really more of a special occasion thing.
Here, cake is exactly like muffins or cranberry bars or shortbread or cookies or brownies—even Cafe Nero and Costa, the British Starbucks-equivalents, have cake in the case of baked goods. It’s everywhere. It’s a snack like any other baked good. The most common varieties I’ve seen have been carrot cake, red velvet cake, and the perennial favorite, white cake with strawberry jam on top.
(I wish I had a picture of white cake with strawberry jam to post here, but my cake wasn’t as pretty after I licked the jam off.)