yeast cake

I have heard the term yeast cake but in my 7 brews i have yet to see one. Is this just a term or can a cake of yeast be retreived from a previous batch of beer. I am an novice please any information will greatly appreciated.
thanks
sims_l22

It refers to pouring a new batch of wort into the fermenting vessel that you just pulled a batch of beerf out of. That is, without washing or otherwise "harvesting" the yeast. The "cake" is just the layer of yeast in the bottom of the vessel. It's really more like mud than a cake, so no, you can't pull it out in cake form.

Well, technically if you drained it really well and let it sit for a long time the yeast at the bottom will "cake". But that's not the point. When we talk about a yeast cake, we're talking about the thick layer of yeast (and other stuff) at the bottom of your fermenter after you've fermented a beer. Some of us like to reuse that yeast to save money on yeast.
You could just add new wort to it and watch it go crazy, but you're pretty much over pitching. You can also wash the yeast to reuse. For a beginning step in reusing yeast, I would say get a nicely clean and sanitized measuring cup, scoop out a cup or so of the yeast cake and add it to your next wort.

There's a lot of info on here about reusing yeast. I'm too lazy to look for it thought...