Wedding Cakes

History Of The Mexican Wedding Cakes

Mexico is a country located in Middle America, that has 2 of the borders to Caribbean Sea and North Pacific, due to this fact Mexico offers nice beach locations for couples to choose in order to celebrate their weddings. The wedding ceremonies combine the style of the traditional with those of modern Western cultural models. Mexican cuisine has preserved its tradition inherited from the former Mexican civilizations adding touches of cuisine brought by other civilizations that populated its territory. The ships coming from France, Spain have brought with them the art of baking cookies while experiencing their recipes with additional flavors and sweetness.

The history of the Mexican wedding cakes is rooted during the times when European people had landed on the wild beaches of the Mexican shores. They have brought with them their cuisine comprising both meals and desserts. The recipes they have introduced started to be enriched with the ingredients found on the new found land. Thus, the most popular dish for dessert was known to be the cookie, due to its properties of long time preservation. It was the best “course” to be served on board of the ships, especially when long time sailings were involved.

The word cookie comes from the Dutch “koeptje” that means small cake, which by the end of 14^th Century were met in the shape of little filled wafers. The early immigrants to USA arriving from England and Holland introduced the cookie to America.  English meaning of these cookies was that of a small cakes or tea cakes that were served during their legendary English tea time. The following years everybody started to make cookies in their home kitchens. Due to American influence combined with that inherited from the other countries in Mexican cuisine, several adaptations of the cookie began to fill the recipes of sweet cakes, emerging some kind of shortbread-like cookies known by different names: Russian tea cakes, Italian Butter Nut, Southern Pecan Butterball, Vienese Sugar Balls, Swedish teacakes, Snowdrop and Snowballs as well.

These cakes are very popular both at wedding ceremonies and other festive occasions. The Mexican wedding cake contains plenty of ground nuts (pecans, hazelnuts, almonds, or walnuts), that is what makes them be different than the original cake recipes. The wedding cake doesn’t necessary has to be a 2 or 3 tiered cake, so long as it has the ingredients that make it Mexican-like. However there are today Mexican wedding couples that prefer to add the traditional ingredients of Mexican cakes into the modern stylish shaped wedding cake. The key to a best recipe is to ensure the using of the best quality butter next to a pure vanilla extract, which is preferred to the artificial type.

The Mexican cuisine is a combination of the influences of many different countries. As the names given to the cakes show, these countries had been France, Caribbean, Italy, Spain, England, Russia, South America, even Africa. But even today Mexican cuisine is constantly influenced by other countries’ cuisines.