CAKE

CAKE

‘Cake’ is a word that almost the whole world knows. From delicate French pastries to New York Cheesecake, from the English Sponge Cakes to Mississippi Mud Pies, cake is something that has a variation in almost every part of the world. The story of how this came into being, however, is known by few….

Once, in an old Neolithic village, a young girl named Lee-Nara watched her mother make their food from oat, grains and other plain things. Suddenly, her younger brother began to wail.

 “Watch the food till I come back,” instructed her mother. The girl watched the hot stone on which her mother cooked.  She picked up the grains and dropped them on the hot stone, trying to cook like her mother. Her mother took the grains, dipped them in a strange thing which she called Water, and put them on the stone. Then mother took them off and put them on a flat rock with a white powder they got from the sea to eat. Lee-Nara picked up another handful, crushing the grains by mistake.

“Uh-oh!” she thought, rolling it into a ball like the other children did with the lumps of some thing their parents got for them to make models. It looked like mud and they were always teasing her as she was the only child in the village who did not have it.

 “Well, I’ll make models with grains and eat them too!” she thought, adding the white powder to the ball. Then she pressed the ball onto the hot stone, and waited. When it finally got baked, her mother was back. She offered her a bite.

 “Why! This tastes good!” said her mother, and then the girl taught her to make it. They called all the villagers, and even the other children were in awe of her. She stood proudly, giving everybody the dish she had made.

“What’s it called?” asked someone. Then she realized she hadn’t even named it.

“It’s called Kaka, after the grains that made it!” she said after a while. This was the first salty ‘cake’.

Years later, the Greeks made a new discovery. A young boy named Icharius was eating honey and dates in his villa’s kitchen while his mother made satura, balls made from oats. She kept putting them on a plate. Icharius picked up the plate with his honey covered hands, splattering honey on all the balls and flattening them.

“Really! This is very careless of you! You are now going to get no more, go and eat these if you are hungry!” scolded his mother. Icharius meekly picked up one and began to eat it. Surprisingly, it tasted amazing!

“Mater, try one!” he said. His mother gave him a suspicious look but bit into one of them.

“This tastes excellent! We shall have these for the great feast tonight! Get the honey and date jars!” she exclaimed. He smiled, and ran to get the jars.

“Mater, what shall we call it?” he asked.

“How about plakous, as they are flat?” suggested his mother (obviously, ‘plakous’ is greek for flat!).

“Perfect!” Icharius grinned….

When the Romans took over Greece, they also added their part to the history of cake.

They used to give fruits, flowers and meat as offerings to their gods. One year, there was a terrible drought and people were dying. The emperor made offerings every day, but nothing happened, till one day, one of the priests, who was a Greek, had an idea.

“You’re Highness?  If you don’t mind may I suggest something?” asked the priest one morning as the worried looking Emperor made his daily offering.

“Not at all. What is it?” replied the weary Emperor.

“Sire, perhaps the gods are tired of your offerings!” he suggested.

“That is a good theory, but what else can we give them?” sighed the Emperor.

“If I may suggest, a Greek dish named Plakous?” said the priest.

“Call my cooks! You will teach them to make this Plakous of yours, and then we shall see,” said the Emperor, clapping his hands.

So the priest was taken to the palace kitchens, where he made the Plakous.

“Ah, but may I add something from our country?” asked the Roman cook.

“Sure!” said the priest. The Roman made a pastry base and placed the Plakous on top.

When it was finished, the Emperor used it for his evening offering, and priest watched nervously. The next day, miraculously, the River Tiber flooded, bringing much needed water. The priest and cook were famous! That dish, was called libum, and was like a modern cheese cake.

The medieval English, of course, were not to be left behind…

It was early morning in the castle, and King Henry the Eighth had ordered a great feast that evening. So the kitchen was in chaos, as a young girl, named Anne, about 3, sat at a table eating breakfast as her mother, the dessert cook, made fruit salad and milk bread pudding while chatting with her friend, the baker, who was making loaves of bread to be eaten with soup. She was eating some of the uncooked bread batter and milk pudding. She dipped one hand in the bread and another in the sugar and milk mixture for the pudding, putting both in her mouth at the same time.

“Mum, how many salads do you have to make?” she asked thoughtfully

“Two hundred, dear! Now finish eating and help me soon!” smiled her mother.

The girl liked the taste of the mixture of bread and milk, and decided to mix both. She poured the sugar and the milk into the bread batter and picked an interesting looking powder and poured it in. Then she mixed it and ran to help her mother. The baker, who had not noticed all the mixing going on behind her back, simply poured the mixture into the bread tin, and set it to bake. Later, at the feast, when the ambassador from the Holy Roman Empire took a piece and bit into it, the baker watched nervously.

“Why, Henry! Your cooks have grown in their culinary discoveries. They have made this interesting sweet bread. Tell me, is this a traditional English secret recipe?” he asked.

“Sweet Bread? Why, I have never heard of such a thing!” The King cried in surprise, placing one slice in his mouth.

“BAKER!” King Henry bellowed the moment he chewed it.

“Y-yes, you’re Majesty?” stammered the baker.

“Where did you get this recipe from?” asked the King.

“Your Highness, I did not make it. I made the bread batter, kept it on the kitchen table and began to clear up. I suppose someone mixed sugar in as I was cleaning, sire! Goodness knows who it was, but it was not me!” said the Baker.

“Well, then one of you must have seen someone taking some sugar!” the king bellowed at the cooks and maids.

“Your Highness, I had made the Milk and sugar topping for the bread pudding and left it on the table as I made the base along with the bread batter. Perhaps someone mixed them both,” said the cook.

“Who was it? Own up!” said the king.

“You’re Majesty? It was me!” said the dessert cook’s daughter, Anne.

“Dear, don’t irritate the king-“

“SILENCE! LET THE CHILD SPEAK!” shouted the king.

“I thought it would taste good, and mixed them both with some powder I noticed lying on the table, your highness,” said Anne boldly.

“It was you? Then this proves how irresponsible my kitchen staff are, to let someone add something to the food without them noticing!” called the King. The Dessert Cook and the Baker looked at each other, frightened.

“However, this young girl has made a culinary discovery! She has converted normal bread into and extraordinary creation! I would like everyone here to applaud for her new dish!” said the king, standing up and clapping.

“Thank you! Now, what should we call this?” asked the King after everyone had finished clapping. There was a volley of suggestions.

“Sweet Bread!”

“Sugared Bread!”

“Baked Sweet Dish!”

“Sugary Flour!”

“STOP!” bellowed King Henry.

“Let the girl decide!” said the king, turning to her.

“Sire, if I may interrupt, can I make a suggestion?” said the Royal Historian.

“Go on,” said the king patiently.

“We could call it cake, after the first bread ever made, perhaps?” said the Historian.

“I think it is a great idea!” said Anne, before the king could say anything.

“ALL RIGHT! I HEREBY NAME THIS DISH “CAKE”. DOES ANYONE OPPOSE?” shouted the King. No one moved.

“THEN IT IS SETTLED. THIS DISH IS NAMED CAKE!” shouted the king, as everyone burst into applause.

Nowadays, baking powder and baking soda are used as raising agents in cake instead of yeast. Cake can be chocolate, vanilla, iced, or not iced, a cupcake or a muffin, a layer cake or a plain cake. It can be any shape size, or color. Now, it can be eaten by anyone, rich or poor, but in earlier times, only the king could eat it and it was expensive to make. 

During World War 2, cakes were made with crushed chestnut and other nuts as substitutes for flour, just as the first cake was made, thousands of years ago. Cake has been made in many ways- the Mexican wedding cakes, as small as toffees, or the huge layered cakes of Europe. Every region has it’s own variety of cake, and cake, whether it is called Tiramisu or Gateau, is still made basically the way the little Tudor girl mixed it all those years ago- with Flour, eggs, butter, milk and sugar! Cake is a term that is almost universally known by everyone, whether it is sweet chocolate brownie or the spicy Tofu- Jalapeño cakes……