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Could you help me check whether my combined sentences are correct or not?

She was carrying a tray.

The tray was filled with cakes.

The cake were homemade.

They were very delicious.

  1. She is carrying a tray of delicious homemade cake.

  2. She is carrying a tray filled with delicious homemade cake.

  3. She is carrying a tray with delicious homemade cake.

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Your original sentences contain an error, prior to combining. This sentence contains an instance of disagreement between subject and verb number: one is singular, the other plural:

The cake were delicious

The combined sentence uses the singular "cake", which means that you're treating "cake" as something uncountable. While this is possible and grammatically correct, it has a different nuance. Uncountable "cake" refers to an undifferentiated quantity of cake material, such as many cakes crumbled or mashed together, or simply a viewpoint of not caring about distinction between individual cakes (because there are so many, or because the perspective is one of indiscriminate consumption, or voluminous production, or something like that):

Joe's stomach was so full of cake he could hardly move. That was the most cake he had ever eaten.

Mom sure baked a heck of a lot of cake over the holidays last year.

A change to this nuance is inappropriate; the original sentences that are to be combined refer to a tray containing individual cakes.

The sentences are each a good combination of the originals if "cakes" is pluralized.

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  • It's my error. I forgot to add an"s" after the cakes were delicious. So it should be "She is carrying a tray of delicious homemade cakes."right?
    – nkm
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 3:01
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    That is right. Or "filled with" or "with".
    – Kaz
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 3:37
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If there is more than one cake, then "cake" should be plural throughout. Besides that, all your examples look fine to me.

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  • 2
    I agree that the sentences should be consistent throughout, but it's worth noting that cake can be used as a mass noun: She is carrying a tray of delicious cake can work even when the tray is filled with slices from two or three different cakes.
    – J.R. ♦
    Commented Nov 18, 2013 at 17:10
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    But only #2 carries through the filled with part. So I think #2 is better than 1 and 3.
    – Jim
    Commented Nov 18, 2013 at 23:39
  • @J.R. Oh, absolutely. "She was carrying a tray filled with cake" and "She was carrying a tray filled with cakes" are both grammatically correct. My comment was just on consistency with the original sentences, not the grammatical correctness of the final sentences.
    – Jay
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 16:10

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