The Sweet and Fascinating History Of Birthday Cake

A party is just not a party without the presence of a delicious cake…have you ever wondered why? It’s true that most people like cakes and those who say that they don’t like cakes are just lying. Birthday is a very day in anyone’s life and there are some crucial birthday traditions that are followed today include – the birthday cake, the birthday wish, the songs , the candles and the wishes etc. Do you know exactly how these birthday tradition began?
Cakes and the candles were thought to be the crucial elements in ancient Greece. If you read the Greek mythology, you would come to know the fact that Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, foresty, hills, the moon and archery. Apparently, it was common in Greece to celebrate the ritual of Artemis by offering the cakes at alter dedicated to her. The cakes were lit with the candles and the thought behind it was to make it appear like a glow of the moon.
The ancient Roman people celebrated the birthday of mere mortals, but especially the male proportion of the society who would be nicely and elegantly presented with the round cakes made with the fruits and flour and sweetened with the honey.
In the time, the Christian community rejected this very idea of celebrating the birthday in Roman way as they used to consider as a sin to celebrating the birthday of a person. This idea still exists in some orthodox Christian and Islam communities in today also. But the Christian gradually became used to with the idea of celebrating birthday with the cake. There’s a prominent reference to a birthday celebration involving cake mentioned in the Squire’s Tale, one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales written sometime between 1386 and 1389.
Now, it’s time to shed the spotlight on 1700s when having birthday cake were treated as the privilege of the elite people. The ingredients used in those cakes were really expensive, especially when the old aged cake rounds of flours and fruit had been discarded with the flavors of multi-tiered extravaganzas. In the year of 1746, the birthday celebration of Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf was held at Marieborn in German. A guest at that party called Andrew Frey wrote the party in detail : “There was a cake as large as any oven could be found to bake it, and holes made in the cake according to the years of the person’s age, every one having a candle stuck into it, and one in the middle.”
However, with Industrial Revolution in UK and US, the ready made available baked cakes were become much available than homemade cakes.
The custom of singing birthday song with the birthday cakes is relatively new. There were two sisters named Patty and Mildred J in Kentucky. They wrote and published a song book called -”Song Stories For Kindergarten in 1883. There was a tune “Good Morning To All” and our birthday song is a direct adaptation from that particular tune.
Now you know the fascinating history of Birthday cakes and birthday song. It’s time to celebrate your loved one’s by ordering a delicious birthday cake online in Bangalore, Chennai, Madurai, etc.