A wedding cake is more than just a matter of taste

“THE couple will now cut the profiteroles” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as the word ‘cake’ and few wedding rituals have been through the thick and thin of it quite like the wedding cake has in recent years. It’s been overlooked for cupcakes, profiteroles - not to mention endless experimentations in ingredients from fennel to feverfew!

The evolution of the wedding cake (in this scribe’s opinion) is down to the Celtic Tiger years when seemingly everything traditional was considered weary and needed to be brought into the 21st century to salvage it. A good concept you might say except that with certain traditions the more they change the more they stay the same, and a wedding cake fits this description perfectly.

But let’s be frank, the wedding cake did have some worthy challengers to its primacy and few wedding guests during the noughties can admit to not being part of a conversation that praised the new heir to the wedding cake throne!

But the story of the wedding cake is as old as the hills and full of romance and kinship. In ancient Rome the wedding cake was held over the bride’s head as a symbol of good fortune, while during the Middle Ages wedding cakes were stacked high and if the bride and groom were able to kiss over the stack, it was meant to bode well for their future.

Wedding cakes also suffered from ‘ one-upmanship’ as people felt the need to have the biggest, best and most ostentatious cake. This led to exorbitant prices for wedding cakes which is a far cry from the days when mothers, aunts and grandmothers used to spend hours making a wedding cake for loved ones. But the wheel is turning and this traditional wedding symbol is once again as vibrant as ever.