Spice Cakes

Spice cake is a type of cake that is traditionally flavoured with a mixture of spices. The cake can be prepared in many varieties. Predominant flavourings include spices such as cinnamon, cloves, allspice, ginger and nutmeg.

In Medieval cuisine, a spice cake, also called spice bread, was a flavourful, sweetened yeast bread. They were typically sweetened with honey, as sugar was largely unavailable in Europe until the 1600s and cooked over an open fire. By the 17th century, spice cake was something similar to the modern raisin bread, usually having spices, sugar, dried fruit, eggs and butter in the yeast dough. The sizes ranged from individual buns to ordinary loaves to the great cake, which was a very large cake, sometimes weighing more than 50 pounds (25 kg) that was baked for holidays and important celebrations. (Because these cakes often included both dried fruit and spices, most of them can also be classified as fruit cakes.

The modern spice cake, a type of butter cake or layer cake, appeared in the latter part of the 19th century. Brown sugar, molasses and a generous quantity of dark-coloured spices were used to produce a dark brown cake. By the middle of the 20th century, various kinds of spice cake were the second most popular cake flavours in the US.