Wedding Cake: Norwegian Style

You may or may not be aware that us Halverson sisters are close to 100% Norwegian. We were raised enjoying Norwegian favorites at holidays and have grown to love our heritage. It seems only fitting that we should then explore what us Norse do for a wedding cake.


Kransekake, which means ring cake, is a traditional Norwegian desert that is eaten on special occasions. Made from almond, sugar and egg whites, the cake is hard to the touch and chewy when you bite into it.

My sister plans on having a Kransekake at her wedding, however I am off the hook as my Grandmother will be making it.

Wedding Cakes: A History

To begin this adventure I decided to take a look back at where the Wedding Cake tradition started.

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.