Who Invented The First Cake?

The cake has existed for thousands of years and has evolved so greatly as to be almost unrecognisable, but the idea of a sweet, fluffy, delicious dessert and even many of the traditions surrounding it have endured from early civilisations to modern custom cake delivery services.

References to birthday cakes exist as far back as Ancient Greece, with the Roman poet Ovid talking about a birthday party he shared with his brother in the book Tristia.

However, the earliest cake makers may, in fact, be the Ancient Egyptians, who made cakes as far back as 4500 years ago.

Early cakes were baked in a very similar way to flatbreads, and in some cases were flatbreads filled with milk and honey, cooked in a special copper mound. This created air bubbles that made the unleavened bread rise and resemble a cake more than a loaf of bread.

The Ancient Egyptians also added wine, seeds and dried fruits, and were the first to serve a baked good as a distinctly sweet treat, although the flat, dense nature of them made them look and taste considerably different to the soft fluffy cakes we enjoy today.

The Ancient Greeks were the first to use a leavening agent in baking, using the yeast formed in beer to create a mix that was closer to modern cakes using eggs, milk, nuts and honey, as well as creating the first cheesecakes using goat’s milk.

The Ancient Romans would closely follow suit, adding butter, eggs and honey to more traditional bread dough, which created a sweet bread that closely resembled cake in its constituency and texture, whilst containing the most common sweeteners of the day.

After the fall of Ancient Rome, many of the techniques used to bake soft cakes were lost, with medieval cakes being almost identical to bread, aside from being baked in a round container and being turned over partway through cooking, unlike bread.