Extreme Speed Baking
Consider that commercial industrial bakeries would be highly motivated to reduce baking time if it was feasible, at least in a money saving manner.

And yet the equipment for continuous process baking uses approximately the same temperatures and times used at home, just with continuous rather than batch oriented equipment, and with a higher degree of precision and ability to repeat consistently.

One therefore concludes that the traditionally known times are at least approximately optimal in terms of outcome and energy (or at least cost).



In some sense, cookies (historically, the word comes from a term for "little cake") are your speed baking answer.  They bake in 12-18 minutes typically, compared to full sized cakes which bake in a time on the order of an hour.

By reducing the size of the food item, the time to cook through is reduced.

Very small cookies (thumbnail sized) can bake through in 5-8 minutes or so, but are terribly tedious and difficult to portion out accurately enough to get consistently good results at home.