Ring Means Marry

If I should tell you who got the ring, you would think it really meant something…
–ADT Whitney, We Girls (1870)

I don’t think it’s any secret that not so long ago, Halloween was a lot more fun (and a lot less grotesque). Bleeding Masks and Body Part Decorations were not yet in vogue and the dark divinations of Samhain had long since been rewritten into harmless fortune-telling party games.

Those games, sometimes called “charms,” attempted to read the unknowable future in a variety of entertaining ways: Nuts were roasted and candles lit; lead was melted, apples were floated, cabbage stalks were plucked —

And cake was eaten.

The Fortune Cake –which is basically a cake with a ring baked into it — was a popular, fun (and usually tasty) fortune-telling activity. Anyone who ate a slice could know his/her future: Ring means marry. No party should be without one!

And, at least in this country during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, no party was. If the popular fiction and “how-to” party manuals of the times are to be believed, a Fortune (or Halloween) Cake was the centerpiece of the party.

Fortune cakes might be descendants (or cousins) of the 12^th Day Cakes which hid a single bean – and may have contained only the ring at first (Marriage being the Prize Fortune). Certainly there are very old tales and recipes that reference a simple “cake with a ring in it.“

The Ring Cake… is made like the ordinary kind, but before it is baked a plain gold ring is hidden in the dough… whoever secures the ring, it is confidently stated, will be the first of the group to marry.

The American Girls Handy Book, Lina Beard and Adelia B. Beard (1887)

But I guess Anything worth doing is worth over-doing, so inevitably other items were also thrown into the cake. A whole array of trinkets foretell not only love but other blessings as well: A coin means wealth, a pebble poverty; a key is for travel, and a thimble or a button means you’ll never marry.

Children and grown-ups, too, always have fun with a tell-your-fortune cake… wash and dry a collection of little articles… a ring, a dime, a small thimble, a button and so on. Drop these into the cake batter just before you put it in the pan to bake. Warn the guests as you serve the cake that they must eat it with care because their fortune is somewhere within.

“Hints for Halloween,” USDA Radio Broadcast (1940)

Hallowe’en Festivities, published 1903, contains a recipe which could be used more or less as-is: We exchanged “candied fruit” for “candied citron” and took “rind” to mean “zest.” There are no baking instructions, so we went classic: 350 for 45 minutes.

Of course, the recipe isn’t really the challenge — it’s finding edible “trinkets” to put in the cake since we know better than to put germ-y coins and buttons in our mouths.

LOVE. Candied cherry

LONG LIFE. Prune: (You’ll live long enough to get wrinkly like a prune)

MISFORTUNE. Beans: (You can only afford to eat beans)

WEALTH. Green candy (a chocolate coin, though tempting, won’t hold its shape)

GOOD LUCK. Bay Leaf (a family joke)

TRAVEL. Cashew (You’ll see the land where cashews grow)

Anyway, Happy Halloween

HomeSchool Go 2 Postscript
What Can You Do with This Charm?

Try making your own fortune cake using a favorite recipe and designing your own set of edible symbols (consider Conversation Hearts, Gummies, Jelly Beans, and Candy-coated chocolate “rocks.”)

Some Halloween manuals contain instructions for making the Fortune Cake out of boxes rather than dough. Try this idea if you’re really more committed to Arts & Crafts than Cookery.

The practice of placing symbolic objects in food to foretell the future isn’t always limited to cakes and may be an even older tradition. Check out Irish colcannon.

Learn more about 12^th Day Cakes.

Read Whitney’s We Girls and compare the characters and plot to those of Alcott’s Little Women. Both works are available to read free at Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg