Currently (2007), what Whirlin Cakes actually were seems to have been forgotten.
They were made for Whirlin Sunday, the fifth Sunday in Lent, in Cambridgeshire, England, particularly in the Isle of Ely (not actually an island, but rather a region around the city of Ely.) They were also made in Leverington, and in Wisbech, a town today (2007) of about 20,000 in the Cambridgeshire Fens.
Language Notes
Some speculate that Whirlin means “whirlwind”; some go further and talk of a legend in Leverington that the devil caught a woman and her cakes in a whirlwind and spun them around the church’s steeple.