The Top Layer Tradition

This was the cake that my mom picked for our wedding. In picking and choosing my battles for the wedding I gave my mom the entire reception so I could have the ceremony. Not fair to me? Maybe not, but while I would have done my reception different I cared more about the elements of my wedding and those details made my wedding intimate and beautiful.

Here's the cake at the reception. Pretty, huh? It's Italian cream cake with cream cheese icing and those flowers are PINKITY PINK!


As you well know, it is customary for the bride and groom to feed each other a bite of their cake, and I wish it could have been a big old hunk of cake, because a bite wasn't enough. For this special occasion I was able to convince my Non-Cake-Lover of a husband to partake in the time honored tradition.


Is that not the tiniest excuse for a piece of cake you've ever seen? The point is he tried a little piece and obviously did it with a smile on his face! I wasn't as happy, because this is all of the cake I got to eat as well.

One year later... the time had come for us to partake in the unfreezing and eating of our cake. It got me to thinking ~ why do people eat year old cake anyway? Is it for luck or prosperity or the key to not getting divorced? I asked a couple of my newlywed friends if they ate their cake and neither of them did, and like me thought that surely the not eating of the cake meant a big ole hex on marriage longevity and bliss.

I did a little research and it turns out that back in the olden days people baked huge wedding cakes and freezed the top of them and then served them at the christening of the birth of their first born around the year anniversary of the wedding. Since the majority of people are waiting longer than their honeymoon to try and start their family people now just eat the top because that's what people used to do.

Unfortunately, I didn't find this information out until AFTER I took a bite in hopes to make our marriage the happiest and longest marriage EVER. I'll admit, it wasn't bad, but all I could think was year old cake... year old cake... year old cake. And I had a 2 day old BabyCakes By Angie sitting across from me in the kitchen.

With that information, I no longer feel bad for throwing the cake away after one bite, and if you are waiting for your 1 year to roll around, you shouldn't feel bad either about clearing up space in your freezer! I mean unless you have a christening where you'll need some cake.