- Why do we put candles on birthday cake?
Hi, there, I'm Aria and I love birthdays.
- Hi, I'm Ray and I love to bake cakes.
- And today, we're going to talk about
the history of birthday cake.
(celebratory instrumental music)
Happy birthday, Ray!
- This is weird, Aria.
- So it's not your birthday?
- Yes.
- Or because on a base level it's a little
odd that to celebrate you emerging from
your mother's womb you expect a
beautifully decorated pastry to be set on fire.
- Because it's not my birthday.
- Great question, Ray, how did birthday cakes
become the tradition that they are today?
I have a story for you.
- You know it isn't my birthday.
- [Aria] Apart from democracy and a
whole bunch of philosophers,
we can also thank the ancient Greeks
for the first burning cakes.
Greeks would make round cheesecakes
as offerings to the goddess of the moon, Artemis.
They then put candles on the cake,
both because they thought fire could
send good intentions to the gods
and so the cakes would glow like the moon.
Isn't that such a nice thought?
- It's nice, seems like a lot of work.
You know, some religions, they just light a candle on fire.
You know, be like, "Cool, we're done."
- I feel like it's a lot of effort
to get a prayer out, honestly.
- Little bit.
- [Aria] And while that is believed to be
the birth of the flaming cake,
it wasn't to celebrate anyone's birthday.
One reason was because, well,
no one knew when anyone was born.
The practice of recording birthdays
wouldn't become popular until the Christian church
began doing so in the medieval period.
The tradition of throwing birthday parties
for children may date back to Germany in the 1400s.
They were called Kinderfests or, literally, children party.
Germans believed children were particularly susceptible
to evil spirits on their birthdays and that candles
on the cake would transport their wishes to God.
Families and friends kept the candles lit all day,
keeping watch until after the evening meal,
when the cake would be served.
- Imagine being, like, just a horrible older sibling
and you just, like, "I want my younger sibling
"to just have a bad birthday, I'm gonna make sure
"that their birthday candle's gonna be off."
- Man, that's sadistic.
Foreshadowing the amount of attention
birthdays demand today,
in 1746 German Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf
celebrated his birthday with a giant cake
on a table in the shape of an L for Ludwig.
The cake had holes bored into it according to
the person's age and to place the candles into.
Oh, and he also had his name spelled out
in two-foot-tall golden letters.
How basic.
- I feel like your measurements are a little off.
- Yeah, I wouldn't say this is to scale,
but I think if you squint a little bit
it can look pretty big.
Squint, use your imagination.
If I look at it through my fingers,
it looks pretty big to me.
This tradition made its way to America
when large numbers of Germans emigrated
to Pennsylvania during the colonial period.
American women became more prolific bakers
than their European counterparts
due to the relative absence of bakeries
and abundance of oven fuel; aka, trees.
The cakes they were making, however,
were still pretty lame by today's standards.
Fruit cakes and yeasty, rich cakes, gross.
What we think of cake couldn't emerge
until British chemist Alfred Bird combined
sodium bicarbonate and cream of tartar.
Baking powder, well an early version anyway.
Finally, cakes could rise without yeast and achieve
a level of light fluffiness that had previously
been extremely difficult and time-consuming.
- This is definitely something closer to
what I would bake currently.
It's lighter and it's less of a bread loaf.
Less hockey puck-like.
Yeah, pretty different.
- [Aria] Not long after, more festive
decorations and frostings became popular.
Back then, cookbooks included recipes for
colored frostings made from parsley and beets, yum.
We should try it, I'm gonna try it though.
Let's just try it.
That's actually really good, wow.
- It is, I'm not mad at that.
- That tasted good so who knows.
- It's a chunky-looking green.
I don't know how I'm gonna feel.
- Whoa, whoa, no, that really tastes like parsley.
Yeah, the texture of the parsley, you can feel.
- It's like a wheat grass shot poured into frosting.
- That's messed up, that's messed up, that's sadistic.
- That one we could burn.
- [Aria] Light, fluffy cakes with candles
and colored frosting were given out on birthdays.
Sounds like the birthday cake we all know and love, right?
Not quite yet.
While it was popular to have writing on cakes
in the late 1800s they would say things
like the person's name along with,
"Many happy returns of the day," catchy.
- It's a lot to write on a cake.
- Yeah, so too much effort for me.
- So they didn't write happy birthday.
- No, no, no Happy Birthday.
You see, Happy Birthday didn't appear on cakes
until after 1910 with the popularization
of the song Happy Birthday to You.
- So we've only been saying Happy Birthday
for about a hundred years right now?
- It's crazy, isn't it?
Before then, you'd just go around and be,
"Happy returns to you on the day."
- Everything seemed like a lot more effort back in the day.
- A lot more effort.
There were gods involved, there was praying,
there were giant Ls, it's just too much effort.
Pre-made cake mixes were available starting around 1930,
but wouldn't become more popular until after World War II.
And the late 1930s was also when Carvel
invented the ice cream cake.
The gates of cake innovation were not
just open but shattered.
- I love a good ice cream cake.
I'd never make one but I love eating a good ice cream cake.
- Why won't you make an ice cream cake?
- It's too much work, man.
- What's your favorite flavor of ice cream, Ray?
- Mint or cookies and cream.
- Two of my least favorite flavors.
- That's why we can never be together.
- [Aria] Today, birthday cakes are more elaborate than ever.
None more so than a 2015 six-foot-long, 1000-pound behemoth.
Purchased by an unnamed buyer for his daughter's birthday,
the cake featured over 4000 diamonds.
Final price, 75 million dollars.
- It's 2015 and a guy decides to buy a birthday cake
and wants to remain anonymous?
You know that that's gonna end up on Instagram somewhere.
The cake probably had it's own hashtag.
- What would the hashtag be? 75 million dollar cake cake?
- Hashtag diamonds on my cake.
- I like that, that's great, that's awesome, man.
Good job.
So where does that leave us today?
- Funny you should ask.
Because I kinda see them more like this.
When I think of birthday cakes I think of
sprinkles, bright colors, and things that
just make you wanna celebrate.
It is a modern rainbow-drip birthday cake.
This is actually a giant cake pop
made to look like an ice cream cone.
That is incredible, Ray.
That is incredible.
This is not made from parsley, right?
- That is not made from parsley but
modern cake.
- [Aria] For those of us who can only dream
of the ultimate birthday cake,
multiple television and internet programs showcase
fancy, sculptural, and complex birthday cakes.
As long as people keep having birthdays,
the birthday cake will continue to adapt and evolve.
Oh, wait, wait.
In a study actually published in 2017,
scientists found that blowing out birthday candles
can increase the chances of bacteria being found
in icing by about 1400 percent.
- So what do we do now?
- Not my problem.
Happy birthday!
- It's still not my birthday.
♪ It's your birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ Lots of happiness ♪
♪ Good luck, too ♪
♪ Congratulations on your birthday ♪
♪ Many happy returns to you ♪