The LINGUA FRANCA Sprachschule blog presents one more „cake“ based idiom. Others can be found here and here.
I spent three days last week at a conference in Frankfurt. There were many excellent presentations and speeches by industry experts, but for me it was the opening keynote speech that really took the cake (den Preis davon tragen). It was funny and engaging while doing an excellent job of introducing the wider themes of the conference.
This idiom is commonly believed to come from dancing competitions popular in African-American communities in the late 19th century. The winners of the competitions would be awarded a huge cake – and so to win was to take the cake.
