Before metal pans became common, bakers used wooden cake hoops—flexible rings that held batter in shape while it baked.

During the 1600s and 1700s, specialized metal cake pans were rare and expensive luxury items. Most households relied on flat hearthstones or iron baking sheets, which were unsuitable for the liquid batters used in early fruitcakes and sponge cakes. To solve this problem, bakers employed cake hoops crafted from flexible woods like willow, ash, or hazel.These wooden strips were soaked in water to make them pliable, then bent into circles and secured with twine or small wooden pegs. According to historical culinary texts such as Hannah Glasse's 1747 book "The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy," these hoops were placed directly onto a baking sheet. The interior was lined with multiple layers of buttered paper to prevent the wood from scorching and to stop the batter from leaking out the bottom.The use of hoops was a critical innovation in pastry evolution because it allowed bakers to create tall, uniform cakes. Without the lateral support of the hoop, the high sugar and butter content of the batter would cause it to flow outward across the baking surface. This method remained standard for professional and domestic bakers until the Industrial Revolution made mass-produced tin and copper molds affordable for the general public in the mid-19th century.