In Jess Touchette’s second contributor post, she shares the fascinating history of frosting and layer cakes. Read on…

In a recent post about 17th-century “biscuit bread,” I traced the centuries-long evolution of “cake” from sweetened, enriched bread to the light and airy confection that we know and love today. There, I noted that the increased availability (and affordability) of refined flour, refined sugar, and commercial leaveners like baking powder enabled 19th-century bakers to produce true, modern cake for the first time. Yet our story doesn’t end there, for two more mile-markers on the road to cake as we now know it remained.