Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man

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"Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man" is a traditional English nursery rhyme.

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man.

Bake me a cake as fast as you can.

Roll it and pat it and mark it with "B"

And put it in the oven for Baby and me.

It is often accompanied by hand-clapping between two people, a clapping game known as pat-a-cake (also rendered as patty-cake or pattycake), after the rhyme. It alternates between a normal individual clap with two-handed claps with the other person. The hands may be crossed as well. This allows for a possibly complex sequence of clapping that must be coordinated between the two.

If told by a parent to a child, the "B" and "baby" in the last two lines are sometimes replaced by the child's first initial or first name.

An alternative rendition has the third line as follows:

Pat it and prick it and mark it with "B"

In this version the child pats, then "pricks" the palm with a finger, then draws a "B" on the palm.

[edit] Other uses

• Bing Crosby and Bob Hope would use this bit in their Road pictures when physically threatened. They would go into this routine, distracting their attacker, and at an appropriate point would switch from patting the "cakes" to suddenly slugging their assailant.

• Bill Haley & His Comets recorded a rock and roll version of the nursery rhyme in 1953.

• On an episode of The Fall Guy, Colt and Howie did the same thing Bing Crosby and Bob Hope did.

• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Eddie Valiant takes revealing photographs of Marvin Acme inside Jessica Rabbit's dressing room where they can be heard playing "patty cake" and Jessica moaning in a decidedly sexual manner. Later, when Roger is angrily looking through the photos, he cycles them over and over, giving a flipbook-like illusion of Marvin and Jessica playing the games.

• In the musical Sweeney Todd, Tobias recites the rhyme in the last scene, just before he kills Todd.