HomeRegency LifeWedding Cakes in Jane Austen’s World

Comments

Wedding Cakes in Jane Austen’s World — 14 Comments

  1. Hi, this sounds really interesting. I’m British and the traditional wedding cake here is still fruit cake, though most go for sponge or other alternatives. I was wandering , because how long the cake could potentially survive, do you think they may have followed the tradition of saving part of it for the christening of their first child?
    Thanks Kristin

    • That’s a really good question, Kristen. I will need to do a little research and see if I can find out when and where that tradition started! I sense another research rabbit hole opening up!

  2. My wedding cake in 1974 was a three layer fruit cake with royal icing so was pretty much like a high class recency cake I suppose. I actually prefer fruit cake to sponge cake so that was good.
    A friend of my mum made it so I’m not sure if she spent several hours beating it ?
    I fear if I had to make one I would definitely need a mixer because 2 minutes beating and that’s me done!!!
    Thanks so much for this post Maria, I enjoyed it. ?

    • Thanks, Glynis! Mixers are wonderful things. I’s really amazing how much beating and mixing in the kitchen will wear you out. Makes me think the head cooks in those days must have had some serious upper body strength!

      • That is probably why most pictures of cooks from times past is rather burly looking people that I for one do not want to mess with. At all.

  3. My mother made a dark Christmas fruitcake every year and iced it with royal icing over marzipan. I can attest to the icing’s hardness but a good saw edged bread knife will cut through it. My sister in law baked a three tier fruitcake for my niece’s wedding but she used fondant icing. Those cakes are pretty dense, I don’t think that the lower tier would crumble under the weight of the upper tiers. I really prefer a fruitcake to those frothy sweet confections which pass for wedding cakes nowadays.

    • The trouble with a fruitcake, even a dense on is that all the bits of fruits and nuts create weak points in the structure of the cake. A smaller cake might survive without a problem, but as cakes get larger, they do become disaster prone. I done a fair number of fancy cakes and have my share of successes and disasters.

  4. I really, really want a stand mixer! But I get a lot done with the handheld.

    Reading this reminded me of the day before Laura Ingalls’ wedding. She was complaining about how hard it was to whip all the eggs for her cake.

    • I had forgotten about that bit from Laura Ingalls! Now I’m going to have to reread that! The stand mixer is a very new addition to our kitchen, and I’m still forting out how to get the best use out of it. I tend to reach for the handmixer because that’s what I’m used to.

  5. While I don’t think there is much chance that I’ll bake one of these, I now understand the reason behind fruit cake! Who would have thought that rum and brandy were preservatives? All I remember is my dad grousing that the annual Christmas gift from one of his vendors would be with us for generations to come!

      • My grandmother also used to make fruitcake for Christmas, along with a variety of cookies, and each of her daughters (my mom has three sisters and a half sister we [the grandkids] didn’t know about at the time) got one for them and their families, except my mom who got two because her birthday is in December so the extra one was a birthday present of sorts. Believe me, they didn’t last long, we ate them rather quickly; if they survived till February then it is because my mom hide some or we were very sick.
        One of the best things when visiting my gran was when she would ask us to make tea (only she drank tea though) and then tell us she still has some of her fruitcake left ad then she would cut rather thick slices or tell my mom to cut thich slices. That often was long after our fruitcake was finished.

        So I know fruitcake can probably last forever, but why should it. It is much to nice to let it try to last forever.

        I would probably have a fruitcake for my wedding cake (when ever I have a wedding) because I still like the more tradisional wedding cakes that are made of fruitcake.
        Btw, I live in South Africa, not sure when or how, but it seems fruitcake is considered a more traditional wedding cake that few people seem to prefer nowadays)

  6. I live in the UK. I had a three tier fruit cake made by my mum for my wedding in 1978 and in 2014 I made one for my daughter’s wedding – in both cases we used Mrs Beeton’s Wedding Cake recipe, which I also use to bake Christmas cake most years. In both cases the cakes were professionally iced over the marzipan. If I remember correctly, mine had the tiers supported on specialist cake pillars which come with a base that sits on the lower cake and a top platform on which the upper cake sits (spreading the weight of the upper cake(s). For my daughter’s cake I used a three tier cake stand – a sort of flying tier arrangement, with each tier disconnected from the other ones but still giving the impression of a single three tier cake. My daughter’s best friend got married in May 2019 and also had a three tier fruit cake. I think it’s still extremely common – and very popular – in the UK.
    The second tier is, or was, traditionally used to distribute to friends and relatives who were unable to attend the wedding, and in families which christen their children, the custom used to be to keep the top tier cake intact for the celebration following the christening of the first child.
    I’m interested in the colossal quantities of eggs – as I recall Mrs B calls for 18 eggs. For a (large) Christmas cake I usually use a third of the quantities. I’m also interested in the cooking time – I’d have said 3 hours was nothing like enough – if the oven is too hot the cake will burn, but if not then the centre of the cake won’t cook in the time. I used to use an Aga and would put the cake in the bottom oven (which is warm rather than hot) and cook for 12 – 16 hours overnight. Wrapping in paper both inside and outside the cake tin is definitely called for. When the cake stops singing it’s cooked.

  7. Reminds me of a Christmas cake. (I’m English) fruitcake, sometimes with alcohol in, covered in marzipan and royal icing? Keeps for ages – I still have half my Christmas cake from this year in my cupboard in a cake tin. Honestly the flexible layer of marzipan and hard shell of royal icing probably could ensure the cake survived postage. Or the apocalypse. Although the one-sentence-recipe is an absolute beast, the number of eggs is what truly impresses me. Call upon your hoard of chickens in the hopes that you can make this. I really appreciate the effort you put into researching all about regency wedding cakes, so thank you.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>