Sacred cakes in ancient Greece were baked loaves, biscuits, pastries, and sponges sweetened with honey (meli) and prepared as unburnt offerings to the gods and goddesses and other divine beings. Unburnt offerings were substitutes for or a complement to animal sacrifices whose bones and fat would then be burnt on the altar while their meat would be served in a cultic feast.
The Greeks baked cakes and other kinds of sweetmeat for both religious events and dinner parties since at least the late Minoan civilization in the 2nd millennium BCE. Greek sacred cakes were offered to the gods and goddesses, or even to the kings and heroes.
Greek sacred cakes may contain the ancient roots of wedding cakes, birthday cakes, and the tradition of putting candles on top of the latter.
Greek classical writers such as Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pindar, and Athenaeus touch upon various kinds of cakes and desserts in their accounts of religious celebrations or dinner parties that are sometimes furnished with mouth-watering recipes. Sacred cakes may also appear in the lists of offerings carved in stone, clay, or metal tablets.
This diverse reflection of sacred cakes in ancient Greek art and material culture continued throughout the Classical Period (c. 480 to c. 323 BCE) and culminated in the Hellenistic Period (c. 323 to c. 31 BCE) when it finally left its mark on the Roman cuisine.
An example of this bake-off impact is the development of the Roman cheese flatbread, placenta, from the Hellenic layered cheesecake, plakous, which has inspired some researchers to peck on both as probable precursors of pizza. It's also why celebrations are incomplete without cake.
The largest group of votive cakes appear on the Athenian little wine jugs that were typically given to 3-year-old children as a present at the Anthesteria festival. This three-day celebration was an end-of-winter (February/March) festival of opening the jars of new wine (fermented from the grapes of the last harvest) and feasting on them with Greek dance and song and giving thanks and praise to the god of wine, Dionysos.
In the Hellenic religious culture, food offerings were served to the worshippers, both clergy and lay, who sat down to eat together as a sign of belonging to the same fellowship, to strengthen their sense of unification and companionship, and to integrate with the worshipped deity through eating the cake or bread, which symbolised his or her material incarnation.
Kekrops is the first Greek ruler who acknowledged Zeus as the highest among the gods of Greek mythology. To edify the savage ways of worship, Kekrops replaced the ritual bloodshed of animals, with the bearing and offering of bull-shaped cakes called the pelanoi. As a result, the pelanos became a sort of national cake to the Athenians, and its name was later used as a generic term for sweet rolls.
Many sacred cakes in ancient Greece were actually made of, filled with, or shaped like fruits. A prominent example is pankarpia, a round cake whose name means "all fruit". This was a piece of dough enriched with sesame seed and boiled in honey, which made the dough plump up and form a glazing and crispy crust like a doughnut.