In homage to Artemis, the moon goddess, the Ancient Greeks began creating moon-shaped cakes.
Ice cream, white, marble, chocolate, German chocolate: Birthday cakes come in hundreds of varieties, all of them delightful in their own sweet way. It's likely that you've had one at one or more of your birthday celebrations. But have you ever paused in between mouthwatering mouthful of cake and icing and asked yourself, "Why am I eating this to celebrate today? Any birthday party needs cake, but has that always been the case? It turns out that although this custom originated in Ancient Greece, it has undergone significant changes since then. Well, a standard practice for all birthday celebrations is cutting a cake and blowing out the candles. A birthday wouldn't be complete without a birthday cake, and this custom is shared by people all around the world. Every nation and ethnic group tends to have a somewhat uniform custom of blowing out the candles, slicing the cake, and belting out the happy birthday song. However, are you aware of the origins of this ritual? Let’s find out.
Legend tells us that the Ancient Greeks decorated cakes with candles as a form of adoration for Artemis, the goddess of the moon and the hunt, long before it became customary to celebrate birthdays. It was thought that the smoke from the candles would send their desires up to the gods, which is why the candles were intended to make the cakes gleam like the moon. The ancient Greeks associated the end of a new year with the consumption of ammilos, a confection honoring the goddess Artemis. The origins of our customary birthday festivities may be traced to these customs, which include singing, lighting candles, and extinguishing them at the conclusion of the ceremony. The stars and moon, which were connected to the goddess of hunting, were symbolized by the candles that were inserted inside the sweet to honor the goddess.
Another idea holds that the custom of blowing out candles started in Switzerland in 1881. The number of candles on the cake represented the person's age, according to a variety of superstitions that the middle-class Swiss people once adhered to. Next, it was requested of the birthday child/girl to blow out each candle individually.
Not only this, throughout the year too, Artemis was honored with several festivals in ancient Greece. One of the goddess's holiest emblems, pastries fashioned like deer, were presented to her at the feast known as Elaphobolia, which is held in March and April each year in Athens and Phocis. Pausanias, the ancient historian, claimed that these were known as "elaphos," which is the Greek word for deer. Cut to the present-day Mikrolimano region, young men and women approaching puberty performed a ritualistic offering of a cake at the second festival.
While cakes, particularly ceremonial ones, were present in other ancient civilizations like Egypt and China, cake-making is said to have originated in Greece and spread to the Romans and the West, along with many other ideas. At least as far back as the late Minoan culture in the second millennium BCE, the Greeks prepared cakes and other types of desserts for both religious ceremonies and dinner parties. No wonder, Greek bakeries all around the Greek world produced sweet rolls, sponge cakes, cheese pies, flatbreads, pastries, twists, and even tiered cakes in a range of sizes and forms, just as we may see in a modern bakery. The cakes might be filled or adorned with fruits and nuts, and they could be created using various types of wheat or barley flour coupled with other ingredients, including cheese, herbs, fruits, and sesame seeds. Greek gods and goddesses, as well as kings and heroes honored and immortalized as city founders, saviors, and ancestors, were served sacred cakes.
The mythological monarch and founder of Athens, Kekrops, is credited by the Greek geographer Pausanias (2nd century CE) with introducing cakes into holy ceremonies. Kekrops was also highly regarded for teaching people various customs that are hallmarks of civilized life, including literacy, marriage, and religious rites.
It goes without saying that old cakes leave no real archeological relics behind. Nonetheless, sculptures, vase paintings, and frescoes all contain a wide variety of their creative depictions. So, what is the exact point that we are trying to make here? Well, the point is simply that Greek classical authors, including Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pindar, and Athenaeus, discuss a variety of cakes and sweets in their descriptions of religious festivals and dinner parties, occasionally including delectable recipe suggestions. The lists of gifts etched on tablets made of stone, clay, or metal may also include offerings of sacred cakes. Throughout the Classical Period (c. 480 to c. 323 BCE), this varied reflection of holy cakes in ancient Greek art and material culture persisted. It ultimately made an impression during the Hellenistic Period (c. 323 to c. 31 BCE) on the Roman cuisine. And, that is how my dear readers, the advent of cake has stayed on through the test of time and beyond.
Now, how did the Romans contribute to the cake-licious adventures, you ask? One illustration of this bake-off effect is the evolution of the Greek layered cheesecake, plakous, into the Roman cheese flatbread, placenta, which has led some scholars to speculate that both were likely forerunners of pizza. Additionally, it has been argued that Greek holy cakes may have sprung from the same ancient origins as birthday cakes, wedding cakes, and the custom of decorating the latter with candles. And isn’t that what we mentioned right in the beginning of the article too? Cakes can never be complete without candles, after all! Know another thing that a great cake can never be complete without?! Yes, some delicious Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate shavings!
The Greek term ‘plakous’ for thin or layered flat loaves is the source of the Latin word placenta. Ancient Greek and Roman cuisine produced placenta cake, which is made out of several layers of dough layered with cheese and honey, seasoned with bay leaves, baked, and finally drizzled with honey. Classical literature like Cato the Elder's De agricultura and the Greek poetry of Archestratos and Antiphanes both make reference to the dessert.