Yellowcake With Frosting

I have to admit, I've not gotten particularly worked up over this whole uraniam/Niger issue. Perhaps it is because I'm already naturally skeptical every time we send troops anywhere, and even more skeptical about the veracity of all politicians. Maybe it's because I'm getting all my stress out by shooting textbooks and have no anxiety to focus anywhere. I don't know.

There are two things which do interest me:

1) The media seem to have really turned a corner in their critical approach to this administration. I think there's been a real lifting of what seemed, to me, to be a lot of deference to a modern administration.

2) It's interesting to me that so much can be made out of something which most people probably don't understand. I for one have no idea what it is that Saddam was supposed to have been seeking from Niger, what he would have done with it had he had it, or what he couldn't do without it. Yet the story seems to have really sprouted legs with the somewhat simplistic notion that it has something to do with nuclear weapons. I'm not saying that's not enough, it obviously is. But whenever a big news story breaks about a topic that I'm ignorant of, I instinctively seek to cure that ignorance. So could anyone give me, a non-science type, a straightforward explanation of what this "yellowcake" stuff is used for?