Many people have cake for their birthdays, weddings, and other special events. However, no one really wonders why we have cake. Baking itself has been big for a very long time, so when did we establish cake? 

In an article on the website Sutori, Sameena Jaleel states,”Cakes have been around since ancient times. The earliest cakes were bread-like and sweetened with honey. Food historians have found that ancient Egyptians were the first civilization to show baking skills.”

In fact, back then it wasn’t even called cake, the name cake comes from a Viking origin, the old norse word “kaka”, the ancient Greeks even called it plakous, which was derived from the word flat. The ingredients for this cake were very similar as well, involving flour, eggs, milk, nuts, and honey.

When cake finally came to America however the idea of cake had already been invented. It started out as sweet bread not becoming the sweet we know. In fact in some cultures it wasn’t used for eating rather, an offering to someone they admired or prayed to.

Eventually, cake came to America being a big part of American culture, especially with the different ethnicities bringing their own style to cake. Some examples are the Indian Pound Cake, Hawaii’s Chantilly Cake, Alaska’s rhubarb cake, and even African American slaves  around the time of 1849 had their own cake recipes.

Cake became celebratory, especially as things modernized people enjoyed cakes for all sorts of occasions, it was one of the most popular delicacies available to the Americans especially since it was one of the things that were primarily in only America, something else about cakes is that the most types of cakes sprung up from dutch ovens from a heavily Dutch-German group in Pennsylvania. 

The biggest part about cake is that it is not meant to be something to eat just when you celebrate something, but cake has so many different uses for it. Not only can it make someone’s day brighter, but it can make dessert time with the family that much more desirable especially in 2020, when most kids would rather be on their phone than talking to their parents or even spending time with them.

Cake is an enjoyable dish that most will and have tried in their lifetime. Cake is historically and culturally important and for these reasons, it will never go.