Election Day in the U.S. can mean bake sales at ballot websites, Election Night watch celebrations with celebratory cakes and cookies, and for some, tension baking while waiting for outcomes. It can feel like a extremely modern-day phenomenon, however according to historians, the baking of “Election Cakes” is a custom that has roots in the 1700s.
“They date back to the earliest elections of the colonial days,” KC Hysmith, a food scholar and American researchstudies Ph. D, informed ForbesWomen editor Maggie McGrath for Forbes Newsroom. “They were merely a cake that was baked to feed a lot of individuals. Elections were a little various back in that time, and everyone would travel from their home, which everybody was a little more spread out. Travel took more time, and so it was a larger experience to go.”
Hysmith states that while the contemporary media protection of election cakes can paint the baking procedure as a “cute” method that wom