Yep, you heard me -- some fool out there is spending BIG bucks on year-old "royal" wedding cake. I kid you NOT!! Check this out: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/piece-royal-cake-could-set-back-thousands-175857852.html

(FYI -- my opinion -- YUCK with a capital Y!!)

They celebrate with fruit cake most of the time. Depending on who made it, it may actually be good.

12 months old would be a 'baby' for a fruitcake.

Check out this article for a cake that was recently tested and found to be still moist AND edible ......... made in 1898 !!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356557/Worlds-oldest-wedding-cake-1898-survived-WW2-bomb-blast.html

Fruitcake is a whole different ballgame. I think a lot of our UK friends actually save a tier of the wedding cake and then use it again for their baby's christening. I have heard that before but not sure how common that is.

Properly stored, year old rich fruit cake will be absolutely gorgeous.

I made the fruit cake for my dad's wedding about 3 months before the big day - and we were eating it for months afterwards.

Not to highjack this post, but Relznik, would you mind sharing your recipe for your fruit cake. I would really like to try it. I've heard it can be really bad or it can be the best cake you've ever eaten...depending upon who makes it. I've never had it. If you don't mind, you could send me your recipe at [email protected]. Or if anyone else has a good recipe they wouldn't mind sharing. Usually, I would just check out the ingredients when choosing a recipe, but I don't even know what would be good ingredients to look for when it comes to fruit cake. LOL.

I'll have to look, but I don't recall the royal wedding being a fruitcake. Can you imagine year old WASC?

Yes, traditionally English/Irish wedding cakes were rich fruit cakes and could be eaten years after baking. Normally a rich fruit cake would be made at least one month in advance of the date it was needed and would be 'fed' with alcohol (brandy, whiskey etc) weekly before icing. The dried fruits (currants, raising, sultanas) would also be soaked in alcohol before being used in the cake. I wouldn't use nuts tho if you wanted to keep it for a long time!

The cake would be covered in marzipan and then iced with Royal Icing so it would be completely sealed.

It was traditional for a tier of the wedding cake to be kept and used as the christening cake for the first child. It would be re-iced tho!

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine ate Mr. Peterman's $29,000 piece of cake from the wedding of King Edward?

My husband and I kept the top layer of our wedding cake as tradition dictates. But we ended up not keeping it for a year. We had it 1 month later. We stored it in the freezer. So much for tradition!

Ok so keeping a whole tier shouldnt be a problem, cos the icing keeps it fresh, but a slice?? Wouldnt the open parts cause it to go stale? Or is it only sliced when its ready to go?

You would only slice the cake when you're ready to serve it.

However, it's all academic... you don't spend that sort of money on a slice of cake to EAT it! LOL! Because it's the cake of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, it's the sort of thing that would be kept.

During the run-up to the wedding, a tv programme here showed a slice of cake from Queen Victoria's wedding cake!

Agreeing here with everyone else who says it will be fine since its fruit cake!

My sister got married a few years ago and most tiers of her cake were fruit. She gave me some to take home, I ate most of it but for some reason when I had about a 2inch slice left I forgot about it and it sat in an airtight tin (wrapped in greasproof paper and tinfoil) When I found it, it was over a year after the wedding and Mammy would have made it about 3 months before then, so it was coming up to 18 months old. I ate some of it and it was perfect, really moist and tasty.

Not saying that if I bought a piece of the royal wedding cake I would actually eat it at that price though!!