A brief history of Wedding Cakes

Weddings have been celebrated with a cake of some sort for many, many years.   Ancient Roman wedding ceremonies ended with the breaking of a cake made from wheat or barley over the bride’s head as a symbol of good fortune. The newly married couple ate a few crumbs then the wedding guests gathering up the crumbs as tokens of good luck. Over the years, the breaking of a cake mellowed into crumbling small pieces of the soft wheat cake over her head - after all the cakes were used up, the guests were supplied with handfuls of 'confetto', a sweet mixture of nuts, dried fruit, and honeyed almonds. Eventually, this mixture was replaced with rice, flower petals, and coloured paper, leading to the ‘confetti’ we know today. 

In Medieval England small spiced buns were stacked in a towering pile, as high as possible. If the bride and groom were able to kiss over the tall stack, they could look forward to a lifetime of prosperity. The earliest British recipe specifically for a wedding was from 1685 – Bride’s Pye was a large round pie with an elaborately decorated pastry crust that concealed a filling of oysters, pine kernels, cockscombs, lambstones (testicles), sweetbreads, and spices. There were also humbler, less expensive versions containing minced meats or just mutton.

In the seventeenth century Bride Pie developed into Bride Cake, the predecessor of the modern wedding cake. Fruited cakes, as symbols of fertility and prosperity, gradually became the centerpieces for weddings. A much less costly bride cake took the simpler form of two large rounds of shortcrust pastry sandwiched together with currants and sprinkled with sugar on the top. Very few homes at the time had an oven, but this type of pastry cake could easily be cooked on a bakestone on the hearth.

Around this time wedding cakes were often made in pairs, one for the bride and another for the groom. Groom’s Cake, a dark, heavy fruitcake, was served alongside Bride Cake. Smaller than Bride Cake and usually not iced, the Groom’s Cake was cut up into little squares that were then placed in boxes for the guests to take home as a wedding memento and to ensure good luck. At bedtime, the recipient of Groom’s Cake would place the square underneath their pillow. This tradition was recorded as early as the seventeenth century but gradually died out, as did the Groom’s Cakes, which, until recently were no longer part of British weddings but are now starting to return, especially if the groom has a hobby or passion that a cake can be made to represent. The tradition is more prevalent in the USA where Groom’s Cake is often served to the guests as favours.

Bride Cake covered with white icing first appeared sometime in the seventeenth century. It was frosted with an early form 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.  Icing sugar was unknown then and ‘twice-refined’ sugar was used – white sugar that had been refined twice, probably similar to our caster sugar today.   Cakes were iced in white as the finer, more refined sugar was much whiter and more expensive therefore it was  a symbol of wealth to have a white iced cake.

During Victorian times, a white-iced cake became desirable as white symbolised purity and virginal attributes.  Icing sugar was becoming widely available leading to the ‘royal icing’ as we know it today – it has been known as this since it was used to decorate Queen Victoria’s wedding cake, when she married Prince Albert in 1840.  A multi-tiered cake, or wedding cake consisted of the tiers being stacked directly on top of each other in the style that is popular today, pillared cakes which are traditionally associated with the Victorian era did not appear until around 1900 – these type of tall cakes were very desirable as they symbolised prosperity and were a status symbol at society weddings, as the less well-off could not afford a pillared and tiered wedding cake.

British wedding cakes remained virtually unchanged from the elaborate Victorian creations until the 1980s, with the invention of sugarpaste - soft, roll-out icing which could be used to cover cakes.  This revolutionised the entire cake – from flavour to design, no longer did the cake have to be a rich fruit cake as this soft icing was suitable for covering all types of sponge cakes and was much quicker to ice a cake  – royal icing had to be done over a period of days or even weeks so the cake inside had to keep well, hence the necessity of using rich fruit cake.   The sugarpaste could be draped and frilled and flowerpaste (a stronger, finer roll-out paste) became commercially available, leading to beautifully made sugar flowers. A typical 1980’s wedding cake was decorated with a garret frill around the sides of the cake, ribbon insertion and a spray of miniature flowers – lifesize ones weren’t accepted as being ‘proper’ for another 15 – 20 years. 

Today, anything goes – the only limit to your wedding cake is the cake maker’s imagination and skill!  From beautifully elegant, minimally-decorated pure white creations with lifesize sugar flowers to fun and funky styles – wonky cakes with personalised characters – and everything in-between.   Cupcakes have seen a rise in popularity, from a tiered stand consisting only of cupcakes to the addition of matching cupcakes to enhance a tiered cake.  Examples of the types of styles available can be seen at http://cakesbysuzanne.net/wedding-cakes.

Over the years, there have been many stories and superstitions connected with wedding cakes.  A few of my favourites are:

•  sharing the cake with family and friends increases fertility and prosperity
•  the bride who bakes her own cake is asking for trouble
• a taste of the cake before the wedding means loss of the husband’s love, while a piece of cake kept after the big day ensures his fidelity
• newlyweds must cut the first slice together
• every guest must eat a small piece to ensure that the happy couple are blessed with children

I’m not sure about the bride baking her own cake asking for trouble, as many brides and their families are now wanting to bake their own cakes, even if they don’t have the necessary skills there are plenty of courses available for them to learn!  Certainly the one about the newlyweds cutting the first slice together is practised today – it’s their first task together as husband and wife!