Twelfth Night Cakes

Today I met a friend for a quick look round Ham House to see the Christmas decorations there. The blip is of Twelfth Night cakes in the kitchen there. They are all very elaborate…and some depict the Delph tiles found round the fireplace a room nearby.
. Apparently when Ham House was built Twelfth Night was a bigger occasion than Christmas. By the mid 1700s Twelfth Cakes had become elaborately decorated rich fruit cakes topped with sugar paste crowns and wax figurines.
Traditionally a dried pea and a bean were hidden in the cake, and the guests who found them were crowned King and Queen for the revels.
Each guest would take on a comic role for the evening by drawing a popular character from a pack of printed cards as they arrived.
By the 1860’s the Twelfth Cake had merged into the Christmas Cake as we know it today.
I don’t think I had heard about these cakes before.