Pontefract cakes are a type of small, roughly circular black sweet

Candy

Candy, specifically sugar candy, is a confection made from a concentrated solution of sugar in water, to which flavorings and colorants are added...

s measuring approximately 2 cm in diameter and 4 mm thick, made of liquorice, originally manufactured in the Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

 town of Pontefract

Pontefract

Pontefract is an historic market town in West Yorkshire, England. Traditionally in the West Riding, near the A1 , the M62 motorway and Castleford. It is one of the five towns in the metropolitan borough of the City of Wakefield and has a population of 28,250...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

The original name for these small tablets of liquorice is a "Pomfret" cake, after the old Norman

Normans

The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...

 name for Pontefract. However, that name has fallen into disuse and they are now almost invariably labelled "Pontefract cakes".

Originally, the sweets were embossed by hand with a stamp, to form their traditional look (the workers who did this were known as 'cakers' and were able to produce upwards of 30,000+ per day), but now they are usually machinery formed. The embossed stamp was originally a stylised image of Pontefract Castle

Pontefract Castle

Pontefract Castle is a castle in the town of Pontefract, in the City of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. It was the site of the demise of Richard II of England, and later the place of a series of famous sieges during the English Civil War-History:...

. When the first secret ballot

Secret ballot

The secret ballot is a voting method in which a voter's choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous. The key aim is to ensure the voter records a sincere choice by forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation or bribery. The system is one means of achieving the goal of...

 in the Northern Hemisphere

Northern Hemisphere

The Northern Hemisphere is the half of a planet that is north of its equator—the word hemisphere literally means “half sphere”. It is also that half of the celestial sphere north of the celestial equator...

 was held in Pontefract on 15th August 1872, the ballot box used was sealed using a Pontefract cake stamp from Frank Dunhill’s factory, which shows the image of a castle and an owl

Owl

Owls are a group of birds that belong to the order Strigiformes, constituting 200 bird of prey species. Most are solitary and nocturnal, with some exceptions . Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, although a few species specialize in hunting fish...

.

The liquorice root used in these cakes was exported to Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

for the first time by a member of the famous Carter family who hailed from Pontefract.

Healthcare professionals have warned against overindulgence on Pontefract cakes after a 56-year-old woman was admitted to hospital after overdosing on the confectionery.