Birthday Cakes and Traditions
This week, Franglisch Foods celebrates its one-year anniversary! One year ago, I finally launched the blog I’d been dreaming of starting since finishing my PhD in Human Studies 2018. For years, I’ve very much wanted to share my research about the power traditional foods hold. I know that not many people will want to read a 300-page dissertation so, even if blogging is a little out of date as a medium, I took the leap last years and have had a lot of fun translating my work into bite sized chunks that people are reading. I am incredibly thankful for all the support I have received from readers, the online community, my family, and my friends as I pursue this hobby in my spare time!
My PhD stemmed from a realization that though much is written on a minority culture’s linguistic assimilation into a dominant, mainstream group, little had been written about the power of French-Canadian and German-Canadian foods in creating and maintaining cultural identity. Cookbooks like Janice Wong’s Chow: From China to Canada: Memories of Food + Family, Vince Agro’s In Grace’s Kitchen: Memoires and Recipes from an Italian-Canadian Childhood, and John Donohue’s Man with a Pan were some of the first cookbooks to show me that there are creative ways to study the power food has in shaping identity. These more detailed accounts even helped me see short, personal introductions to recipes as important pieces in a puzzle about the author of a cookbook. What goes into a cookbook and a recipe and what doesn’t matters. A lot.
Moreover, little had been written academically about how everyday, seemingly ordinary and unpolitical, French-Canadian and dishes were, in fact, fundamental in forging cultural identities and allegiances. For the last year, I’ve been able to dig deeper into this analysis with specific examples that didn’t work in the more the theoretical framework of my thesis. I hope you have enjoyed reading these examples and would love to hear from you if you have!
Today I thought it fitting to look at the tradition of birthday cakes. I agree completely with Jessie Oleson Moore, author of CakeSpy.com and The Secret Lives of Baked Goods, that it is odd that this is a dessert we “put candles on, sing to, spit at… and then watch… friends and family clamor for a piece” (3). Yet we do all those things with this dessert. No matter what shape your birthday cake may take, it may interest you to know that the birthday cake tradition dates back ancient times. According to Elizabeth Hagan’s article “The Sweet History of Birthday Cakes,” the tradition of honouring a birthday back to Ancient Egypt with the practice of celebrating the birth of new pharaohs. Ancient Greece and Rome also celebrated with cakes and candles. As with other desserts, birthday cakes became more common with the Industrial Revolution as it became easier to acquire ingredients and people had more time to spend time in the kitchen.
But what matters in terms of identity? Well, as with other foods we’ve looked at this past year, it’s all about what our food choices tell us and others about who we are.
I’ve come to realize that making a birthday cake is as much about the maker as it is about the person receiving the cake. When discussing what cake I would make to celebrate my bloggaversery, my daughter groaned when I told her I wanted a plain chocolate cake. To her, celebrations need pump and exuberance. She wanted me to make a big layered cake with lots of icing and sprinkles. I learnt a lot about what matters to her in these discussions.
But, as the person who is receiving the cake, and the one making it, my desires trumped her – not something that happens with kids or if one is gifting a cake. I’m a super picky dessert eater and, when it comes to sweats, my pickiness is made worse by my extreme dislike of consuming calories that either don’t fill me up or that don’t taste good. Yup, I’m that person who says no to dessert when I don’t know if I’ll like it or who picks off the icing or who eats around chunks of fruit when a piece is forced on me. My cousin often shares a story from our childhood that I just refused dessert altogether when my aunt refused to serve me a slide of cake without the fruit compote. I had that kind of stubbornness when I was eight!
For my own birthday, when given the choice, I would always pick a chocolate cake over a vanilla one, a non-layered cake over a layered one, a homemade cake over a store bought one, and a think layer of simple buttercream icing over anything with fondant or icing that is piled on too thick. I don’t like sprinkles or chunks. I don’t want anything fancy.
What made me a picky eater? Watching my kids’ very different approaches to food I can tell you that it is partly out of my control and so there must be a genetic component to food preferences. But I know that watching what I eat also stems from societal pressures and messages about body image. I believe in treats. I love a good snack, but I eat what I like and leave what I don’t if it means I’ll regret the calories.
You may recognize the cake recipe I made for Franglisch Food’s anniversary. It’s the same one I shared in “Valentine’s Day Cupcakes – or the ‘Want’ of a Tradition” because, for the same reason I shared there, it’s a great cake! This recipe can easily be made into any sized pan and makes enough cake for a small gathering. People like it and it’s easy to make. It’s thus, in my opinion, the perfect recipe and one that will continue to be made in my home, and my kids’ future homes, for years to come.
Thanks for reading! Here’s to another great year!
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