We
All Eat: CAKE!
Clockwise upper right: Big
elephant at the birthday party
eating
wedding cake, cat in the hat eating cake
toy, blowing out birthday candles
Cake is a term with
a long history (the word is of Viking
origin, from the Old Norse kaka) and
denotes a baked flour confection sweetened
with sugar or honey; it is mixed with eggs
and often, but not invariably, with milk and
fat; and it has a porous texture from the
mixture rising during cooking. It is not surprising
that the frontiers between cake and bread,
biscuit and bun are indistinct. The progenitor
of all is bread in its simplest form. As techniques
for baking and leavening developed, and eating
patterns changed, what were originally regarded
as froms of bread came to be seen as categories
of their own and named accordingly. Certain
Roman breads, enriched with eggs and butter,
must have achieved a cakelike consistency
and thus approached one of these indistinct
frontiers.
Europe and places such as
North America where European influence is
strong have always been the center of cakes.
One might even draw a line more tightly, fourn
English-speaking areas. No other language
has a word that means exactly the same as
the English 'cake.' The continental European
gateau and torte often contain higher proportions
of butter, eggs and enriching ingredients
such as chocolate, and often lean towaars
pastry rathern than cake. Central and East
European items such as baba
and the Easter kulich are
likewise different.
The western tradition of
cakes applies little in Asia. In some countries
western-style cakes have been adopted on a
small scale, for example the small sponge
cakes called kasutera in
Japan. But the 'cakes' which are imporant
in Asian are quite different from anything
occidental for examples, see mooncakes
and rice cakes of the Philippines.
The history of cakes, goes
a long way back. Among the remains found in
Swiss lake villages were crude cakes make
from roughly crushed gains, moistened, compacted
and cooked on a hot stone. Such cakes can
be regarded as a form of unleavened bread,
as the precursor of all modern European baked
products. Some modern survivors of these mixtures
still go by the name 'cake', for instance
oatcakes, although these are now considreed
to be more closely related to biscuits by
virtue of their flat, thin shape and brittle
texture.
Ancient Egypt was the first
culture to show evidence of true skill in
bakin, making many kinds of bread including
some sweetened with hone. The Greeks had a
form of cheesecake and the Romans developed
early versions of fruitcakes with raisins,
nuts and other fruits. These ended up in 14th
century Britain. Chaucer mentions immense
cakes made for special occasions. One was
made with 13 kilograms of flour and contained
butter, cream, eggs, spices, currants and
honey.
Moulds, in the form of cake
hoops or pans have been used for forming cakes
since at least the mid-17th century. Most
cakes were eaten accompanied by a glass of
sweet wine or tea. At large banquets, elaborately
decorated cakes might form part of the display,
but would probably not be eaten. By the mid-19th
century the French were including a separate
"sweet" course at the end of the
meal which might include 'gateau.'
During the 19th century,
technology made the cake-baker's life much
easier. The chemical raising agent bicarbonate
of soda, introduced in the 1840's, followed
by baking powder ( a dry mixture of bicarbonate
of soda with a mild acid), replaced yeast,
providing a greater leavening power with less
effort. Another technology breakthrough was
more accuate temperature controlled ovens.
In most of NW Europe and
North America a well-developed tradition of
home baking survives, with a huge repertoire
of cake recipes developed from the basic methods.
The abililty to bake a good cake was a prized
skill among housewives in the early to mid-20th
century, when many households could produce
a simple robust, filling 'cut and come again'
cake, implying abundance and hospitality.
Although the popularity of
home baking and the role of cakes in the diet
have both changed during the 20th century,
cakes remain almost ubiquitous in the western
world. They have kept their image as 'treats'
and maintain their ceremonial importance at
weddings and birthdays.
Source:
The Penguin Companion to Food
by Alan Davidson
Our
Cake Gallery
"Let
Them Eat Cake"
Image Credits: counterclockwise
from upper right:
Marie Antoinette costumes,
walking
cakestand costume, Marie
Antoinette model, Marie eating cake cartoon
"At the time that whoever-she-was
uttered the infamous quotation "let them
eat cake," the word "cake"
did not refer to the familiar dessert item
that the modern-day French call le gateau.
The operative term was brioche, a flour-and-water
paste that was "caked" onto the
interiors of the ovens and baking pans of
the professional boulangers of the era. (The
modern equivalent is the oil-and-flour mixture
applied to non-Teflon cake pans.) At the end
of the day, the baker would scrape the leavings
from his pans and ovens and set them outside
the door for the benefit of beggars and scavengers.
Thus, the lady in question was simply giving
practical, if somewhat flippant, advice to
her poor subjects: If one cannot afford the
bourgeois bread, he can avail himself of the
poor man's "cake."
However, by the time Marie
Antoinette ascended the throne, brioche had
acquired its current meaning--a fancy pastry
item which, like le gateau, was priced far
beyond the means of any but the wealthiest
classes. The anti-Marie propagandists were
well aware that their compatriots, most of
whom were uneducated in either history or
semantics, would swallow the story whole,
so to speak, and not get the joke."
Source: The
Straight Dope
"To
Have One's Cake and Eat It Too"
On
the day before her 51st birthday, Secretary
Rice enjoys a piece of "surprise"
birthday cake with Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal
after the inaugural meeting of the U.S.-Saudi
Strategic Dialogue on November, 13, 2005.
Photo
credit
To wish to have one's cake
and eat it too (sometimes eat one's cake and
have it too) is to want more than one can
handle or deserve, or to try to have two incompatible
things. This is a popular English idiomatic
proverb, or figure of speech.
The phrase's earliest recording
is from 1546 as "wolde you bothe eate
your cake, and haue your cake?", alluding
to the impossibility of eating your cake and
still having it afterwards; the modern version
(where the clauses are reversed) is a corruption
which was first signaled in 1812.
Comedian George Carlin once
critiqued this idiom by saying, "When
people say, 'Oh you just want to have your
cake and eat it too.' What good is a cake
you can't eat? What should I eat, someone
else's cake instead?". Of course, in
the original correct form (eat your cake and
have it too), Carlin's critique does not apply.
Have Your Cake and Eat It
Too is a book by Susan G. Purdy. Bob Dylan
changed the phrase in his song "Lay Lady
Lay" in the line: "You can have
your cake and eat it, too."
---Wikipedia
Carrot Cake sculpture by Evan
Izer, 1999
Image
credit
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man,
Bake me a cake as fast as you can.
Roll it, and prick it, and mark it with a
"B"
And put it in the oven for Baby and me!
Variation:
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man,
So I will, master, as fast as I can.
Pat it, and prick it, and mark it with a "T"
And put it in the oven for Tommy and me!
This 410-pound cake was made by Unique Bakery
owners Russell and Helen Smith (left) when
the Chief Super Market celebrated its 10th
anniversary in 1949. Store owner H.B. “Doc”
Lowery is on the right.
Image
credit
Birthday
cake hot air balloon
Cake
stand
French cakes or gateaux, including
a buche de Noel and a "galette de rois"
Epiphany cake
A common custom
in many cultures, is the Epiphany cake containing
a trinket or bean, the person who finds it
in his piece becoming the king of the feast.
Sometimes there are two trinkets, or one bean
and one pea: one for a king and one one for
a queen. In the royal courts of the later
Middle Ages, these customs were very popular.
Some believe these celebrations derived from
pagan Roman customs associated with Saturnalia,
which fell at around the same time as Christmas.
If so, it can be seen as an example of "inculturation",
or transforming pre-Christian customs and
practices by giving them Christian significance.
The Roman theme of the lordship of the feast
was easily shifted to the Epiphany theme of
kingship: that of Christ himself and of the
Magi, or "Three Kings".
Different
parts of Europe have different traditional
recipes for the Epiphany cake -- from the
almond-paste-filled pastry, the French "galette
de Rois" topped by golden paper crown,
to the British fruit-filled, iced and layered
confection.
Wedding
Cake
Jackie
and John F Kennedy cutting their wedding cake
A wedding cake
is the traditional cake served to the guests
at a wedding breakfast, after a wedding. It
is usually a large cake, multi-layered or
tiered, and heavily decorated with icing,
occasionally over a layer of marzipan, topped
with a small statue of a bride and groom.
Other common motifs include doves, gold rings
and horseshoes, the latter symbolising good
luck. Achieving a dense, strong cake that
can support the decorations while remaining
edible can be considered the epitome of the
baker's art and skill.
Tradition generally requires
that the first cut of the cake be performed
by bride and groom together, often with a
ceremonial knife, or even a sword. An older,
archaic tradition had the bride serve all
portions to the groom's family, as a symbolic
transfer of her household labor from her family
to the groom's family.
Tradition may also dictate
that the bride and groom feed the first bites
of this cake to each other.
Photo
credit
Again, this may symbolize the new family unit
formed and the replacement of the old parent-child
union. It is also fairly popular for the bride
and groom to shove the cake in each other's
faces, rather than eating it.
Other guests may then partake
of the cake, portions may be taken home or
shipped to people who missed the festivities.
(An old tradition held that if a bridesmaid
slept with a piece of wedding cake beneath
her pillow she might dream of her future husband.)
A portion may be stored,
and eaten by the couple at their first wedding
anniversary, or at the christening of their
first child- The cake may be frozen for this
purpose, formerly the top tier of the cake
might consist of fruitcake which could be
stored for a great length of time.
The origins of the tradition
of the wedding cake are hard to determine.
Sweets are traditional at many celebrations
for most if not all cultures world-wide. Ancient
Roman records detail sweets distributed at
weddings. The book Folklore Myths and Legends
of Britain details the ancient Roman practice
of dropping a wedding cake on the head of
the bride.
Medieval and Renaissance
resources also mention large cakes at weddings.
Such cakes may have been fruitcake.
A large cake can take a long
time to make, and without modern refrigeration,
a heavy fat and sugar frosting may have prevented
spoilage by limiting moisture exposure. Another
possibility is the use of sugar and fat required
satisfying the need for conspicuous consumption
for the families involved in the wedding.
Henry VIII of England enacted
a law specifying the quantity of sugar a cake
may have, possibly to control or tax this
prevailing convention.
During World War II, sugar
was rationed in the UK, so icing could not
be made, and cakes were reduced in size. To
overcome cakes were often served inside a
box which had been decorated with plaster
of Paris, to resemble a larger, traditional
cake.
Source: Wikipedia
Birthday
Cakes
Birthday
cake for William Shakespeare
A birthday cake in Western
culture is a pastry or dessert served to a
person on his or her birthday, sometimes decorated
with the person's name and/or a message of
congratulations. It is often decorated with
candles, one for each year the person has
been alive. One tradition is to add an extra
candle "for good luck," although
this varies.
Tradition holds that the
person with the birthday can make a wish,
which will come true if all the candles can
be blown out in one breath. But many people
make a wish if it takes them more than one
breath. Another tradition is to smear out
the name of the person for good luck before
slicing the cake for serving.
Birthday cakes are usually
sponge cakes, although many other recipies
can be used. One of the most popular flavors
is chocolate.
The U.S. patent #6,319,530
is a "method of photocopying an image
onto an edible web for decorating iced baked
goods." This invention enables one to
inkjet print a food-grade color photograph
on the cake surface.
Source: Wikipedia
Other
Types of Cakes
Angel
food cake
Apple cake
Babka
Baumkuchen
Birthday cake
Black Forest cake
Buccellato
Bundt cake
Butter cake
Butterfly cake
Carrot cake
Cheesecake
Chocolate cake
Christmas cake
Chiffon cake
Croquembouche
Cupcake
Date and walnut loaf
Devil's food cake
Eccles cake
Fairy cake
Fifteens
Fruit cake
German chocolate cake
Génoise Cake
Gingerbread
Gob
Gooey butter cake
Honey cake
Hot milk cake
Hummingbird cake
Ice cream cake
Jaffa Cakes
Leavened cake, Hefekuchen
Mooncake
Orehnjaca
Pancake
Panettone
Petit fours
Pineapple Upside Down Cake
Pound cake
Queen Elizabeth cake
Red bean cake
Red velvet cake
Sachertorte
St. Honoré Cake
Simnel cake
Spice cake
Sponge cake
Stack cake
Suncake
Tarte Tatin
Teacake
Tres leches cake
Vanilla slice
Vanilla cake
Victoria Sponge
Wedding cake
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