Did you know that one of the ancient Roman words for cake was placenta, derived from the Greek plakous, meaning flat? 

Or that although it’s now understood that Marie Antoinette probably never said ‘Let them eat cake’ of the starving masses beyond the gates of Versailles, cheap dry cake mixes made with surplus molasses may have helped millions of hungry American families survive the Great Depression?

Like the tarot, cake makes frequent appearances in my debut romantic novel, Mystic Ridge.

Why? Because I love it. Cake is one of my favourite foods. I often wish that really superb cake made a more frequent appearance in my life. It doesn’t help that writing and related matters consume so much of my time that I rarely bake. When I do bake, my cakes have a habit of sinking in the middle, so I prefer to eat other people’s.

 In Katmandu in the 1980s, I remember tea shops full of the most beautiful looking tortes which the guide books exhorted travellers not to eat, because of the risk of gastro. It was torture to resist. When I visited the UK’s Oxford a few years ago, I stumbled across a tea shop where numerous home made cakes rested on stands, to be served by the slice with cups of tea in fine china cups. And I was once lucky enough to stay in the Sacher Hotel in Salzburg, home of the famous Sacher Torte. They left a wrapped piece of torte on every pillow.

 In Sydney’s Surry Hills in the 1980s, there was the Alternative Tea House where cake and tea were served to patrons seated on cushions on the floor, but I haven’t ever seen the like of that wonderful Oxford tea shop in Australia.

 One more aside before I return to historical facts. I suspect there’s a cake loving gene, because, guess which book my not very bookish grandchildren will sit and leaf through quietly for an age? The Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book, of course.

 Back to the history of cake. It began with the Neanderthals, who crushed and moistened grains, and presumably baked them on the fire. Although the recipe sounds more like bread,  bread and cake were more or less interchangeable until the invention of baking powder around the mid C19th. Prior to that, cakes were yeasted, and sweetened with honey. Nuts and dried fruits were often added for flavour. They sound very much like modern fruit loaf.

 After the Neanderthals, the Egyptians were known to bake cakes. The Romans took cakes into battle with them for the next life, as well as offering them to the gods.

 The English word cake derives from the old Norse, or Viking word, ‘kaka,’ and came into use around the C13th. Fruitcakes and gingerbread were popular in medieval Europe before refrigeration because they could last for months.

 Cakes were round like bread, and baked in metal hoops. The shape represents the sun, the full moon, and the circle of life. Chinese moon cakes are baked to celebrate the harvest moon festival. The ancient Greeks baked cakes each month to mark the birth of Artemis, goddess of the moon, and lit candles on them so the smoke would carry their prayers and wishes skywards to the gods. The Romans also baked cakes for weddings and to celebrate the 50th birthdays of powerful men. (never women or slaves)

 The tradition of icing cakes began in Europe in the mid C17th when refined sugar became available.

 Back to cake mixes, which were marketed to housewives in the 1950s. Many housewives were bored and depressed and sometimes enraged because they were trapped in rigid social roles, and also because some of them had been banished to stifling domesticity after taking on work responsibilities during the second world war. The ads encouraged them to simplify the making process with the cake mix, and channel their thwarted creativity (and intelligence) into crafting the icing.

 My own late mother was a superb cook, and I still miss her birthday cakes. Every year she’d bake the same triple layered sponge for my brother and me. There’d be a chocolate, strawberry and vanilla layer, held together with apricot jam and butter cream. The buttercream icing on the outside was to die for. My brother’s cake was always blue and mine was pink. She sprinkled both with those dollar sweets that are like little rainbow dashes. I’d sell my soul for a single slice of that cake now. My friend Peri now bakes me one of her superb flourless chocolate hazelnut cakes every year for my birthday, which has helped to take the edge off my yearning for Mum’s cake.

 Does anyone remember the pale blue Princess Torte from Sydney’s Edna’s Table? Now that was a cake to die for.

 It’s no wonder that Claire, the heroine of Mystic Ridge, takes such solace in cake when everything else in her life seems to be falling apart. Savouring a fine piece of cake is, in my view, a pleasure without equal.