Cakes! Because there is always some reason to celebrate

Carrot cake. Image taken from ambitiouskitchen.com -
Carrot cake. Image taken from ambitiouskitchen.com -

“With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”

– Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

This continues to be a very tough year. I honestly can't think of a single person who has not been affected in some way or another by the bizarre run of events that have hijacked the course of 2020. Whether or not we want it to be true, the world that we knew at the beginning of the year no longer exists, and the way of life that we had grown accustomed to has been radically altered in ways that we are still trying to come to grips with. People have much reason to be anxious and concerned, and there is no shortage of stressful happenings going on around us. And yet, in spite of all the momentous changes and uncertainty, life goes on. Even in the midst of this global chaos, even with all of the terrible news, there are still little miracles that are happening every day, and there are still many things to be grateful for, and there is always, always some reason to celebrate.

Aside from the major festivals which are peppered throughout the year, we all set aside certain times in our personal lives to celebrate the good things that happen to us in our lives, and one such tradition which we get to to partake in again, and again throughout the years are our own birthdays and the birthdays of our loved ones.

When it comes to birthday celebrations, there are few desserts that are as ubiquitous as cake. These cakes that we enjoy on birthdays are not only delicious treats, but they also serve as a symbol of the fact that other people love and care about us and are thrilled that we are still around to live another year on this crazy planet. Yet it struck me this week, as I sang happy birthday to a friend while standing in front of a frosted carrot cake, how strange this practice really is. It lead to an interesting series of questions: why do we eat cake on our birthdays? And why do we celebrate birthdays anyways? Sometimes things are so common to our lives that we don't realise that these practices weren't around forever, and traditions such as eating a cake full of lit candles, while singing the Happy Birthday Song are such an ingrained part of our birthday celebrations that we scarcely think to question why we do it.

>

Though the pages of history are often shrouded in a fog of mystery and uncertainty, it seems that the two ancient cultures that we have to thank for these traditions are the Greeks and the Egyptians. Even though they were far from being celebrations for the masses, the Egyptians are the ones credited for starting the tradition of birthday celebrations, as the great leaders of the empire, who were considered incarnations of the gods, deemed it appropriate to celebrate their own days of birth. The pharaohs started the tradition of instituting empire-wide celebrations in honour of their own birthdays, ordering businesses shut for the day while holding large feasts for huge numbers of servants. That we eat cake on these special days finds its origins in the mystical temples of ancient Greece, where cakes made with honey were offered to Artemis, the goddess of the moon and the hunt. It is believed that these cakes were adorned with candles to make them reminiscent of the glowing light of the moon, and some say that prayers were offered around these candles, so that the candle's smoke would take the prayers up to the abode of the gods. It was perhaps the genesis of our tradition of making wishes before blowing out our birthday candles.

Carrot cake. Image taken from aflavorjournal.com -

That these mystical traditions form the basis of the birthday celebrations that we know and love today may not really matter much to us modern folk, but instead the true thread that unites us to the past is the way that humans have always looked for reasons to celebrate our lives, even in the most dire of circumstances. So today, we cast one eye back to the ancient past which formed our way of life, and one eye forward to the future, which exists in the unsettling realm of the unknown, all while keeping our feet firmly planted in the present, and remembering to seek out moments of joy and celebration, even at our darkest moments. There is always, after all, some reason to celebrate and eat cake!

Carrot Cake with Honey Frosting

Ingredients

1 pound carrots, peeled and grated

1 ½ cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

>

½ tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp all spice

4 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

½ cup white sugar

½ cup brown sugar

1 ½ cups oil

1 cup toasted walnuts, finely chopped (optional)

>

For the frosting:

6 tbs butter, at room temperature

3 cups confectioner's sugar

¼ cup honey

1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 11 x 8 inch baking pan with a little butter and set aside.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and all spice into a large mixing bowl.

In another mixing bowl, beat the eggs using an electric mixer until they are well blended. Add the vanilla, sugars, and oil and beat until well incorporated.

>

Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture in 3 batches, folding them in with a spatula.

Add the carrots and walnuts (if using) and fold in to the mixture. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 40-45 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean. Remove from pan and set aside to cool.

For the frosting, cream the butter with half of the sugar until it is soft. Then add the honey and rest of the sugar and beat until blended and creamy. Spread the honey frosting over the cooled carrot cake and enjoy!

Comments

"Cakes! Because there is always some reason to celebrate"

More in this section