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History of the Birthday Cake The history of cakes and candles began in Ancient Greece. The Greeks made round cakes to honor Artemis, the goddess of the moon. They often decorated it with either 1 lit candle or several to represent the glow of the moon. Overtime, other cultures began to make cakes and ate them for their taste, rather than to honor Artemis. The first birthday cake was believed to have been made in Germany in the middle ages. The Germans used the cake to celebrate the birthdays of young children and called the celebration Kinderfest. It was also here that cakes began to be layered and alternate ingredients were used to make the cake sweeter than the usual coarse, bread-like cake that was usually found. This kind of cake was called Geburtstagorten by the Germans. The 17th century was the period that introduced birthday cakes with a more elaborate detail of icing, layers, and decorations. However, these kinds of cakes were only affordable by the wealthy, upper class due to high prices in ingredients. In the 18th century, food and cooking utensils started to become more accessible, and therefore, more affordable. With that, the price of cakes went down significantly and the quantity of cakes baked went up considerably. As mentioned above, the Greeks were credited with putting candles on cakes to represent the glow of the moon. They also believed that the smoke from the lit candles carried their prayers and wishes to their Gods who lived in the skies. Some scholars do not attribute the Greeks for the tradition of putting candles on cakes though. Some believe it started in Germany, where a candle was supposedly placed on the cake to represent “the light of life”. Today, many cultures place candles on cakes out of tradition, as well as superstition. Usually, the quantity of candles on a cake is representative to the age being celebrated. The superstition is to make a silent wish and blow out all the candles at one time so the wish comes true. Many believe if the candles are not blown out in one breath or if the wish is told to anyone else, it will not come true. What started out as a simple, bread pastry, turned into a phenomenon around the world. An excerpt from ProFlowers http://www.proflowers.com

Wedding Cake: A Slice of History
(An excerpt from Gastronomica 5:2-) Origins | Carol Wilson
Bride cake covered with white icing first appeared sometime in the seventeenth century. It was frosted with the precursor of royal icing, a sort of meringue mixture of whisked egg white and sugar, which was applied to the hot cake straight from the oven and then returned to the oven to firm up. When applied to wedding cakes, this type of icing was known as “bliss.” In 1769 Mrs. Raffald (the most celebrated English cookery writer of the eighteenth century after Hannah Glasse) was the first to offer the combination of bride cake, almond paste, and royal icing.3 Hannah Glasse, in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy,4 gave a recipe for the cake that included four pounds of flour, thirty-two eggs, six pounds of dried fruit, and half a pint of brandy. After the cake was baked, it was covered with a pure white, smooth icing made with “double refined sugar,” egg whites, musk, ambergrease [sic], and orange-flower water. The mixture was beaten for two hours, then spread over the cake and dried in the oven until hard. This drying process required constant vigilance to ensure that the iced cake did not color or scorch. At Queen Victoria’s wedding to Prince Albert in 1840, white icing was used to decorate her cake, and this icing has been known as “royal icing” ever since. The multitiered cake—which by the nineteenth century had gradually acquired the name “wedding cake”—measured more than nine feet in circumference. The London Times of February 1840 described the cake in detail. On the second tier, which was supported by two pedestals, a sculpture of “Britannia” gazed upon the royal couple as they exchanged their vows, while at their feet sat a dog, symbolizing faithfulness, and two turtledoves, symbolizing purity and innocence. There were also several sculpted cupids, including one happily writing the date of the wedding onto a tablet. The wedding cake that commemorated the marriage of Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, Vicky, in 1858 was less elaborate. Only the bottom tier consisted of cake; the others were made of sugar icing and were purely decorative, one stacked directly on top of the other. The now-traditional multitiered British wedding cake—a grand affair of heavily fruited cake layers decorated with royal icing and embellished with sugar flowers, doves, horseshoes, and bells—had its origins in the wedding cake made for the marriage of Prince Leopold in 1882. For the first time guests could enjoy a wedding cake made entirely of cake. This cake was also tiered, with each tier comprised of an iced cake stacked rather like a succession of hatboxes. The icing in between had been allowed to harden to prevent the upper tiers from sinking into the lower layers. However, it was to take another twenty years before the tiers of wedding cakes would be separated by columns (often disguised pieces of a broom handle). And it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the tiers were separated and supported by columns of hardened icing. These tiered cakes symbolized prosperity and were a status symbol at society weddings, as the less well-off could not afford a pillared and tiered wedding cake. When Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II) married Prince Philip in 1947, the official wedding cake stood nine feet high and weighed five hundred pounds. It was made by McVitie and Price, using ingredients received from Australian Girl Guides as a wedding gift. One tier was used on the wedding day; one was kept until the christening of Prince Charles; and a third was dispatched back to Australia, to the guides who had thought of the Queen. Origins | Carol Wilson

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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

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