The Wedding Cake, Sweet Sensations

Ah yes, the wedding cake. That heavenly dessert tower formed with feather light cake layers coated with decadent fillings and lavished with butter cream frosting. Add the exquisitely crafted swirls, flowers and the wedding topper and one has a creation as suitable for the camera as it is for the palate.
The wedding cake has been the dessert of choice for centuries, but they weren’t always this elaborate or even as tasty. The Romans created the tradition of the wedding cake, but it would be unrecognisable to the modern world. In fact they started out using loaves of wheat bread. The loaves were broken over the heads of the bride and groom to bring luck. Sometimes the groom would break it over the bride’s head. The crumbs that fell to the floor were considered good luck and the more crumbs, the more children the couple were likely to have.
Things changed during the Middle Ages. Each guest would bring a small cake to the wedding and these would be stacked on top of each other. In order to ensure good luck in the marriage, the bride and groom had to kiss over the top of the tower of cakes.
It wasn’t until 17th Century France that wedding cakes started to resemble what we are familiar with today. Things started out simple enough with wheat buns coated with frosting and then stacked. Through the years those simple towers of stacked buns have turned into elaborate artistic creations. Today they are as much a feast for the eye as well as a sweet indulgence.