Baked in a loaf pan but usually heavier than and made a bit differently than cake.
Cake recipes may use baking soda or powder for leavening but many also often rely on folding in beaten egg whites for a lighter texture. Other cake recipes have you cream together butter and sugar to aerate the butter so that the leavening can create a lighter texture. You further aerate the batter by beating in eggs. Often the recipe will tell you to beat this mixture for several minutes to create a very aerated liquid component that you then add the dry ingredients and leavening to. The aeration creates bubbles which allow the gases your leavening releases to expand and create a lighter texture than you would have with a quickbread.
Pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, banana bread, nut breads, etc, are known here in the US as quickbreads. The method is very simple. Mix dry ingredients in one bowl, mix wet ingredients in another bowl. Combine. Stir only until all the flour in incorporated. Get it in the oven fast. There isn't a lot of structure to hold in the gases your leavening is creating. (A single acting baking powder is activated when the wet ingredients are added. A double acting baking powder reacts to the wet ingredients, but also reacts to the heat of the oven. Most baking powders sold in the US are double-acting.)
You would also use this method and usually can use any quickbread recipe to make muffins.
Many cake recipes can be used to make cupcakes, as well.
