Right now in my refrigerator resides a year old piece of cake. Though I am sadly neglect when it comes to cleaning out old food and sometimes unearth wilted herbs and moldy fruit (hey, that's my dirt, not OPD!) this cake is not an unwitting science experiment. It has traveled many miles, from Geneva, NY to Long Island, NY to Catskill, NY and finally back down to good old Queens to sit in my refrigerator, waiting for my husband and I to take a bite of the cake we ate a year ago on our wedding day.
As you can imagine, year old cake does not inspire confidence in consumption. We received this cake from my inlaws (who have generously volunteered their freezer to its cause for the past year) on Saturday, and it has been sitting there, with it's smushed icing and chocolaty cake mocking me for the past four days. Which of course, harkens yet another question: How long does defrosted year old cake last in your refrigerator anyway? On one hand, it's a year old... is a few more days really going to hurt? But on the other hand, uh, it's a year old. Well, almost at least. Maybe sooner is better than later in terms of the eating. Don't want it to go... stale?
Though this cake was utterly wonderful on our wedding day-- so good that on our way out of the venue to the post-party (which was basically just beers at Odells-- aka flashback to 1998) I grabbed two cupcakes (best cake-option ever. Much neater to grab on your way out of the party in a gluttonous cake-double-fisting move) to nosh on on the ride home-- I am having serious doubts that it will be that delicious the second time around. Do I really want to taint my beautiful cake-binging memories? And of course, having this dilemma in the first place brings up serious "where in the hell did thiswacked up tradition come from anyway???"
My friends know me as something of a crazy wedding etiquette and tradition junkie due to my obsessive reading of indiebride , yet I can not think of anything I've read that tells where this crazy tradition came from-- and why my mom and MIL thought it was a perfectly logical one to keep, despite our somewhat a-traditional wedding. So, thanks to the unending amazingness of the internet after a few easy clicks, I seem to have come up with an answer....
The traditional wedding cake, often found in England, is the fruitcake. I think you can find adequate proof for this in the Briget Jones books. Brides (and I suppose grooms too) would traditionally save the top tier of this cake to save for the baptism of their first child... which would come no longer than 12 months after the blissful day they were wed. At least, this is the answer I got at yahoo answers, and the person who answered that question sourced www.traditionalbride.com. Take from that what you will, but it seems pretty darn logical to me...
But as the husband and I don't have any christenings to plan as of this week, and our half a mini-cake would make a piss-poor christening cake, our cake remains what it started as-- a cold, edible enigma. Wish us luck as we attempt to eat year old cake and stave off food poisoning...
I'll add some pictures of our cake when I get less lazy and get my ass off of the couch.
As a side note, this post was the first I have done in my new firefox addon of Scribefire. It is awesome, as it keeps the internet in the top frame for easy access surfing of wedding related trivia as I blog. Can you imagine a more perfect world?
As you can imagine, year old cake does not inspire confidence in consumption. We received this cake from my inlaws (who have generously volunteered their freezer to its cause for the past year) on Saturday, and it has been sitting there, with it's smushed icing and chocolaty cake mocking me for the past four days. Which of course, harkens yet another question: How long does defrosted year old cake last in your refrigerator anyway? On one hand, it's a year old... is a few more days really going to hurt? But on the other hand, uh, it's a year old. Well, almost at least. Maybe sooner is better than later in terms of the eating. Don't want it to go... stale?
Though this cake was utterly wonderful on our wedding day-- so good that on our way out of the venue to the post-party (which was basically just beers at Odells-- aka flashback to 1998) I grabbed two cupcakes (best cake-option ever. Much neater to grab on your way out of the party in a gluttonous cake-double-fisting move) to nosh on on the ride home-- I am having serious doubts that it will be that delicious the second time around. Do I really want to taint my beautiful cake-binging memories? And of course, having this dilemma in the first place brings up serious "where in the hell did thiswacked up tradition come from anyway???"
My friends know me as something of a crazy wedding etiquette and tradition junkie due to my obsessive reading of indiebride , yet I can not think of anything I've read that tells where this crazy tradition came from-- and why my mom and MIL thought it was a perfectly logical one to keep, despite our somewhat a-traditional wedding. So, thanks to the unending amazingness of the internet after a few easy clicks, I seem to have come up with an answer....
The traditional wedding cake, often found in England, is the fruitcake. I think you can find adequate proof for this in the Briget Jones books. Brides (and I suppose grooms too) would traditionally save the top tier of this cake to save for the baptism of their first child... which would come no longer than 12 months after the blissful day they were wed. At least, this is the answer I got at yahoo answers, and the person who answered that question sourced www.traditionalbride.com. Take from that what you will, but it seems pretty darn logical to me...
But as the husband and I don't have any christenings to plan as of this week, and our half a mini-cake would make a piss-poor christening cake, our cake remains what it started as-- a cold, edible enigma. Wish us luck as we attempt to eat year old cake and stave off food poisoning...
I'll add some pictures of our cake when I get less lazy and get my ass off of the couch.
As a side note, this post was the first I have done in my new firefox addon of Scribefire. It is awesome, as it keeps the internet in the top frame for easy access surfing of wedding related trivia as I blog. Can you imagine a more perfect world?
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1 comment:
yup, british wedding cake is our fruitcake. and it really will last forever and a day. twitch.
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