The best thing since sliced bread

Celebrations have always been marked with the distribution of cakes and desserts. It is our way to share our happiness with the world and every second a happiness is baked. Be it the weddings, birthdays or any celebration, cutting of cakes is a usual ceremony. Every time a cake is baked, a moment is celebrated. But do we know how these cakes were brought in our world. Who was the first person to supply this delicious delight in our world of celebrations? Let’s dive into the history of cakes and desserts.

The journey of cakes started with the discovery of bread, butter, honey, sugar and eggs. This discovery resulted in ‘Sweet Bread”. No one really knows who the “Willy Wonka” of cakes was, but it is said that Egyptians were the ones who perfected the art of baking and experimented with various kinds of bread to make sweet cakes. They used yeast as the leavening agent. The Romans are said to have perfected the art of using the yeast as the leaving agent. Italy made an important contribution to the baking skills by teaching the world to add whipped eggs to the batter. In the middle ages, baking was a skill that was not a luxury. Everyone did not own an oven to bake these sweet delights. But later globalization led to decrease in the prices and publishing of cookbooks. This gave access to the middle-class to bake the cakes and so baking grew as a profession delivering happiness to the world in the form of these beautifully decorated pieces of sweetness.We Indians are famous for our love for sweets. We are a land full of variety of sweets. Cakes were added to the list by the English. Initially India had a bakery in West Bengal that supplied only to the English. The first cake was introduced to the Indians by Mambally Bapu in 1883. He baked the first cake in Thalassery, Kerela in his biscuit factory called the Royal Biscuit Factory. Later this factory became an important cake supplier to the world.Mongini’s is another example of introducing delicious cakes in India. It was founded by two Italian brothers in 1902 on the Churchgate street in Bombay. Ever since its inception, the bakery has been an important cake supplier in India. The best bakeries that bake the best cakes in India are as follows:Albert Bakery, Bengaluru.Thom’s Café, Bengaluru.OG Variar Bakery, Bengaluru.Nahoum and Sons, Calcutta.Flury’s Calcutta.Smith Field Bakery, Chennai.Benney’s cakes and Bakes, Chennai.Ellora’s, Dehradun.Defence bakery, Delhi and so on.The history speaks of how important the cakes are in our life. The discovery of the cakes speaks a million stories about the art of baking. Thus every time you bake a cake, remember that you are carrying forward the legacy passed on to you by our ancestors.

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