Pancake vs. Cake — What's the Difference?

A pancake (or hotcake, griddlecake, or flapjack, not to be confused with oat bar flapjacks) is a flat cake, often thin and round, prepared from a starch-based batter that may contain eggs, milk and butter and cooked on a hot surface such as a griddle or frying pan, often frying with oil or butter. Archaeological evidence suggests that pancakes were probably the earliest and most widespread cereal food eaten in prehistoric societies.The pancake's shape and structure varies worldwide.

Cake is a form of sweet food made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients, that is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate, and that share features with other desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.

A thin, flat cake of batter, fried on both sides in a pan and typically rolled up with a sweet or savoury filling

A sweet baked food made of flour, liquid, eggs, and other ingredients, such as raising agents and flavorings.

Make-up consisting of a flat solid layer of compressed powder, used especially in the theatre.

A flat rounded mass of dough or batter, such as a pancake, that is baked or fried.

(with reference to an aircraft) make or cause to make a pancake landing

A flat rounded mass of hashed or chopped food that is baked or fried; a patty.

Flatten or become flattened

A shaped or molded piece, as of soap or ice.

A thin cake made of batter that is poured onto a hot greased surface and cooked on both sides until brown. Also called flannel cake, flapjack, griddle cake, hotcake; also called regionally battercake.

A layer or deposit of compacted matter

To cause (an aircraft) to make a pancake landing.

To cover or fill with a thick layer, as of compacted matter

To make a pancake landing.

To become formed into a compact or crusty mass

To fall flat to the ground with great force, especially to collapse in such a way that higher floors or structures fall directly on the ones beneath.

A rich, sweet dessert food, typically made of flour, sugar, and eggs and baked in an oven, and often covered in icing.

A thin batter cake fried in a pan or on a griddle in oil or butter; in particular:

A small mass of baked dough, especially a thin loaf from unleavened dough.

In England, an often unleavened cake similar to a crepe.

A thin wafer-shaped mass of fried batter; a griddlecake or pancake.

In the US (and e.g. Scotland), a leavened, thicker, fluffier cake.

A block of any of various dense materials.

(theater) A kind of makeup, consisting of a thick layer of a compressed powder.

(slang) A trivially easy task or responsibility; from a piece of cake.

(juggling) A type of throw, usually with a ring where the prop is thrown in such a way that it rotates round an axis of the diameter of the prop.

(slang) Money.

Anything very thin and flat.

Used to describe the doctrine of having one's cake and eating it too.

Composite leather made of scraps, glue and board, by extension of (4), material originally used for insoles, but later used also for heels and even soles.

(slang) A buttock, especially one that is exceptionally plump.

A box on which an actor stands to make them appear taller.

(pyrotechnics) A multi-shot fireworks assembly comprising several tubes, each with a fireworks effect, lit by a single fuse.

(volleyball) A defensive play in which the ball bounces off the top of a hand that has been pressed flat against the floor.

(transitive) Coat (something) with a crust of solid material.

(intransitive) To make a pancake landing.

(transitive) To form into a cake, or mass.

To collapse one floor after another.

(intransitive) Of blood or other liquid, to dry out and become hard.

(transitive) To flatten violently.

A small mass of dough baked; especially, a thin loaf from unleavened dough; as, an oatmeal cake; johnnycake.

A thin cake of batter fried in a pan or on a griddle; a griddlecake; a flapjack.

A sweetened composition of flour and other ingredients, leavened or unleavened, baked in a loaf or mass of any size or shape.

A flat cake of thin batter fried on both sides on a griddle

A thin wafer-shaped mass of fried batter; a griddlecake or pancake; as buckwheat cakes.

A mass of matter concreted, congealed, or molded into a solid mass of any form, esp. into a form rather flat than high; as, a cake of soap; an ague cake.

To form into a cake, or mass.

To concrete or consolidate into a hard mass, as dough in an oven; to coagulate.

To cackle as a goose.

A block of solid substance (such as soap or wax);

Small flat mass of chopped food

Made from or based on a mixture of flour and sugar and eggs

Form a coat over;