Let’s Eat Year-Old Wedding Cake! An Ex Post Facto Examination of an Odd Tradition

You’ve all heard of the tradition of saving the top tier of the wedding cake for the couple to eat a year later on their anniversary, but I bet most of you don’t know where that tradition came from. I know I didn’t. In fact, I recently ate year-old cake that survived a 10 hour van ride in the care of my brother (Nate, I hope you are as responsible about traveling with wedding cakes as you are with WaWa sandwiches?), a three day power outage, and a move, all while haphazardly wrapped in foil. And I did so without having any idea why.

So I decided to do a little bit of research. It turns out that the tradition of saving the top layer of the wedding cake dates back to the 19th century, when elaborate, multi-tiered wedding cakes became more common. However, it wasn’t originally for the couple to eat on their anniversary… it was to serve at the christening of their first child. Well, as more and more couples moved away from the tendency to immediately procreate, the tradition had to be altered. You know what’s worse than year-old cake? Five-year-old cake. So the tradition of eating it on the first anniversary was born.

Of course being the sucker for traditions that I am, and given the fact that I didn’t get nearly as much of that cake as I would have liked on my actually wedding day, I decided that we must eat our cake, regardless of the trials and tribulations it had undergone. Actually, while we are speaking of suckers for tradition, I should tell you that my husband might be even more of one than I. One night this summer, I came home to find nothing sweet in the house. I peered in the freezer… all of the Dove chocolates were gone. But wait! What is that in the shiny foil!? Aha! I monkeyed my way into the foil and pulled off a piece of blue fondant. The next morning, upon discovering my doing, Courtney wailed (am I exaggerating? I don’t know, it’s genetic) “you’ve curssssed our marrriaggge!” Well, I don’t think that I cursed our marriage, but the fondant wasn’t very good so I never went back for more.

I apologize, that as a bit of a tangent. Where was I? Ah yes, eating our wedding cake, which proved to be a bit of a challenge. You see, the Saturday before our anniversary, we went to another wedding in Northern Virginia before heading to a little B&B in Charlottesville. So our cake had to spend some time in the freezer of the Market Street Bar & Grill at the Reston Hyatt, travel another three hours and hangout in the trunk while we picked apples, and finally chill out in the main fridge at our B&B before finally being consumed.

At this point you’re probably imagining that our cake was quite appalling and possibly resulted in food poisoning. Well, neither are entirely true. Although a bit hard to (fit in our) stomach after an eight course tasting menu, the cake itself was quite good. The icing was rather appalling, but it apparently did a good job of protecting the cake, which was surprisingly moist, and the raspberries and chocolate ganache, which were still quite fresh.

Would you judge me if I told you I had another slice on Tuesday?

Johanna