A History of Halloween

While Halloween is a custom celebrated in many countries around the world, Ireland is believed to be the birthplace of the festival. The Irish tradition dates back to the eighteenth century. Nowadays Halloween is a national holiday in Ireland, celebrated on the last Monday in October.

Halloween takes its roots from the old Celtic festival Samhain Eve, when it was believed that the link between the worlds of living and dead was at its strongest.

Many of the Celtic Halloween traditions live on in Ireland today and were brought to America by Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century. The name Halloween comes from All Hallows' Evening, which is what All Saint's Day (November 1st) was called in Medieval times.

Traditionally an Irish Halloween dinner will include boiled potatoes, cabbage and raw onions. Cleaned coins are wrapped in baking paper and hidden in the potatoes for the children to find and keep.

The barnbrack cake is traditionally served for dessert. It is a fruitcake that has a rag, ring and coin hidden inside it. The rag represents a doubtful financial future, the ring represents impending romance and happiness, and the coin represents riches. It is believed that the individual that finds the hidden treasure will also find that respective fate.

The legend of the Jack O'Lantern also goes back to the eighteenth century.

The legend is that an Irish blacksmith called Jack was denied entry to Heaven after he has was found to have colluded with the Devil. He was condemned to wander the Earth and his only light was a burning coal inside a hollowed out turnip. The villagers believed that placing a Jack O'Lantern in their window would keep the damned soul of the wandering blacksmith away.

When the Irish immigrates arrived in America and tried to carry on the tradition they found there was not enough turnips and so they resorted to using pumpkins instead.

People would dress in ghost and goblin costumes to confuse the spirits that wandered the Earth on this night, so that they would not be taken by them.

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The History of Cake

The word "cake" comes from the Old Norse word "kaka" and it means something baked and sweet with eggs and often milk or fat. They are porous because they rise when you cook them. A lot of Roman breads with butter and eggs must have been similar and sometimes the frontiers between cakes, cookies, and bread can be indistinct because the ingredients and cooking methods are so similar, as are the resulting flavors and textures.

These sweet confections are really popular in Europe and also in places like North America where there is a strong European influence. There are often more eggs, butter, and rich ingredients in continental European torte and gateau than in the English cakes. Asian ones are very different again.

Crude cakes were found in the remains of Swiss lake villages and these were made from moistened, compacted, crushed grains and baked on hot stones. Ancient Egyptians made theirs with nuts, raisins and other fruits and this is similar to what people ate in the 1300s in the United Kingdom.

Molds for baking have been used since the 1600s and they could be made from paper, metal or wood. There were also adjustable ones. Pans were sometimes used to bake the cakes, which were enjoyed with a cup of tea or a glass of sweet wine in that era. They would have formed part of the display at banquets and feasts but were only for the display then, not for eating. The French served their baked confections after dinner as a dessert from the mid-1800s.

The first frosting recipes were a boiled mixture of egg whites and sugar, as well as various flavorings, and these would be poured over the top of the cake. It would then be baked for a bit longer, until the frosting formed a hard, glossy crust. A lot of these baked confections would also have contained dried fruits like currants or raisins.

Bicarbonate of soda was introduced in the middle of the nineteenth century and then baking powder was created. Baking powder is a mixture of bicarbonate of soda and acid. This replaced yeast and makes it possible to bake recipes more easily.

As ovens became easier to control, this also helped the bakers. Extra refined white flour made an appearance in the 1800s and butter-cream frostings started to replace the boiled frostings. Dry baking mixes came later and high-altitude baking mixes were invented in the 1940s.

Epiphany Cakes

An epiphany cake is a common custom in various cultures and this is a baked sweet confection, which contains a bean or some kind of trinket or symbolic figure. Sometimes there are two figures - one representing a king and one for a queen.

These were popular in the Middle Ages in the royal courts, and it is thought that such customs came from pagan Roman customs. There are different epiphany recipes in different European countries - the British iced, layered, fruit-filled confection is very different from the French galette de Rois, for example, with its golden paper crown.

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