Tiered For Celebrations

Inspired by the spire of a church and triggered by a baker’s urgent need to express love, tiered cakes have gained currency over the years as they add extravaganza to an occasion

- Jyotismita Sharma

Late in September this year, a bakery in the US faced the wrath of the country’s food regulator for including ‘love’ as an ingredient in the label of its products. Love, according to the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), is not an ingredient and, therefore, should not be included in the label. Yes, they were serious! The argument goes that adding extra information in the label has the potential to distract consumers from the actual ingredients listed and deter their ability to realise what they are actually eating.

“Your Nashoba Granola label lists ingredient ‘Love’. Ingredients required to be declared on the label or labeling of food must be listed by their common or usual name,” the FDA said in its “warning letter” to Nashoba Brook Bakery in Concord, Massachusetts.

“’Love’ is not a common or usual name of an ingredient, and is considered to be intervening material because it is not part of the common or usual name of the ingredient,” it added.

While, using ‘love’ into a food ingredient appears to be too far-fetched an idea, cakes, if not most bakery items, are many a time synonymous with celebration, festivities, and camaraderie. For, hardly anyone cuts a cake to mark a sad event. But cutting a cake is a ritual in birthday celebrations, weddings, marriage anniversaries, or in every occasion you want to remember fondly.

In fact, it is believed that it was love that triggered the imagination of the tiered cake by a baker in Britain, in the late 18th century.