This article is about the tradition. This article needs additional citations cupcake birthday cakes for adults verification.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. A birthday cake is a cake eaten as part of a birthday celebration. Birthday cakes are often layer cakes with frosting served with small lit candles on top representing the celebrant’s age. Birthday cakes have been a part of birthday celebrations in Western European countries since the middle of the 19th century. However, the link between cakes and birthday celebrations may date back to ancient Roman times.
In classical Roman culture, ‘cakes’ were occasionally served at special birthdays and at weddings. These were flat circles made from flour and nuts, leavened with yeast, and sweetened with honey. In the 15th century, bakeries in Germany began to market one-layer cakes for customers’ birthdays in addition to cakes for weddings. During the 17th century, the birthday cake took on its contemporary form. These elaborate 17th century cakes had many aspects of the contemporary birthday cake, like multiple layers, icing, and decorations.
However, these cakes were only available to the very wealthy. The cake, pastry, or dessert is served to a person on their birthday. In contemporary Western cultures, the cake is topped with one or more lit candles, which the celebrated individual attempts to blow out. There is no standard for birthday cakes, though the “Happy Birthday” song is often sung while the cake is served in English-speaking countries, or an equivalent birthday song in the appropriate language of the country.