It all began in the Roman empire... according to Smithsonian.com's post "The Strange History of the Wedding Cake", marriages were sealed when the groom smashed a barley cake over the bride’s head for good fortune. Not quite where you expect a beautiful tradition to begin, however maybe this explains our modern tradition of shoving cake in your spouses face when you "feed it" to them.
The earliest wedding cake recipe is from 1685 and is for Bride's Pie. Unlike the tasty desert pies we have today, Bride's Pie was filled with oysters, pine kernels, cockscombs, lambstones (testicles), sweetbreads and spices. The pie was considered the most important dish at the wedding and as a guest it was rude not to eat a bite of the pie (happy we have moved on from this tradition).
A traditional bride's cake, complete with white icing, first appeared in the 17th century. Similar to having a white dress, white icing on a wedding cake symbolized purity. White icing was also seen as a status symbol because pure white sugar was very expensive. The term "Royal Icing" comes from the use of white icing on Queen Victoria's wedding cake in 1840.
A few historic royal cakes:
Queen Elizabeth II cake weighed 500 pounds and stood 9 feet tall.
Princess Diana's 5 foot tall cake took 14 weeks to complete.
King Abdullah and Queen Rania, and this is only one of two cakes.
For a more complete history read "Wedding Cake: A Slick of History" by Carol Wilson here.
King Abdullah and Queen Rania, and this is only one of two cakes.
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