You Call That A Wedding Cake?!

On the eve of Prince William and Kate Middleton's Royal wedding, speculation and rumors abound about every detail, especially the cake. A few details have already been released: it will be a very traditional fruit cake covered in marzipan and royal icing. The colors will be white and cream and the flowers will consist of the English Tudor Rose, the Welsh Daffodil, the Scotish Thistle, and the Irish Shamrock.

Being the traditional type of British wedding cake, Princess Diana had the same. As far as the flowers, Kate is being rather preferential towards the home countries; Queen Elizabeth II's own wedding dress was embroidered with the national flower of each country over which she reigns.

Some of you non bakers and wedding cake decoraters might be puzzled as to why the British cover an unpopular Christmas cake in marzipan and royal icing and serve it at thier weddings. Its origins were practical and several hundred years later it is tradition. An even older tradition is a tall stack of cakes and as any cake decorator will tell you, cakes don't naturally want to stay ontop of eachother, they sink into eachother. The solution: sturdy building materials, i.e. fruit cake, which is just about the sturdiest cake around. The dense cake provides a solid base that will not be crushed by the tower of cake it supports.

Ever hear of the tradition of the newly weds keeping the top tier for thier first anniversary? Well, originally, they kept it for thier first child's christening. Either way, anniversary or christening, without refrigeration you can't keep a cake past the honeymoon. Enter the fruit cake, which we all know will be the cockroach's only food supply after a nuclear halocaust, as the anti-fruit cake joke goes...

While America's distaste for fruit cake is still prevelant, many are getting into the act, by serving it at parties while watching the wedding on telvision. Personally, I have always been a big fan of the dense cake laced with alcohol and spotted with dried fruit gems.

The future King and Queen of a quarter of the world's population, otherwise known as the Commonwealth Realm may be having a very traditional fruit cake, which might still boggle your mind, but consider some other traditional baked goods served at weddings around the world and fruit cake may not seem so out of place or even out of season. In fact, many of the cakes served at weddings are the same cakes served at all special occasions, especially Christmas.

Centuries old rivals and often times subjects to the English crown, the French have thier own traditional wedding cake. It is called a croquembouch, meaning crack in the mouth. It consists of profiteroles, or cream puffs dipped in caramel and stacked into a tall cone and wrapped in spun sugar.

The tall cone shape is continued by the northernly Scandanavians and the Danes with the kransekake, or ring cake. It consists of consentrict circles of an almond sponge cake stacked on top of each other and held together with icing. It is another all purpose special occaision cake, particularly Christmas.

Throughout Central Europe, many countries have a variation of a cake that is baked, more or less on a spit or in a rotissery type oven. The Germans call it Baumkuchen, or "tree cake" because when you cut it open it looks like the rings of a tree. The Baltic country of Lithuania has, I think, the most striking version which they also refer to as a tree cake or Šakotis whichy means "branchy."

A plain Šakotis.

A Šakotis decorated as a modern wedding cake with sugar roses and swans.

A traditional Šakotis rotissery oven.

In the Slavic countries of Russia, Poland, and the Ukraine the traditional wedding treat is an oranamental bread called korovai.  Though it has no specific design and varies by region, it is heavily deocrated with birds, periwinkles and other flowers, the moon, and wheat sheaths all to symbolize love, prosperity, purity, and the happiness of the couple.

Western style sweets of all kinds, including wedding cakes have been creeping into Asian cultures for many years now. However, traditional Asian "sweets" are rarely sweet. They mostly consist of red bean paste, rice, and sometimes a sugar cane juice similar to molasses. Here is a short video of making traditional Chinese wedding rice cakes.

In comparison, a wedding fruit cake doesn't seem so different after all, does it?

UPDATE: 4/29/11
Here is the actual fruit cake that William &Kate served at thier reception.