It’s the spookiest month of the year, and that means supernatural rituals involving…cake? That’s right, this Halloween we’re talking about dumb cakes! Let’s brush those cobwebs off this old tradition and dive right in!
“Dumb cakes” were not something stupid; they were actually the main event of a supernatural ritual conducted by young unmarried women in the United States and the United Kingdom in order to find out who their future husband was. This game was played from the 1700s clear into the mid-1900s.
The ritual is simple:
Two or three young women would gather in the kitchen late at night. In complete silence, they would have to bake a simple cake made of flour, water and salt (which sounds a little gross, but let’s keep going). Then, every girl would mark the cake with their initials, then set the cake into the oven to bake, still in complete silence. After taking the cake out of the oven, the girls would break the cake – sometimes even taking a bite – and then would begin an odd march, backwards to their beds. They would set the cake under their pillows, and after they fell asleep, they would dream of their future husbands.
This may or may not work, but this Halloween, why not give dumb cakes a try? You never know what you might find out!
