New Years Cakes

New Years Cakes were considered a delicacy most peculiar to New York and the Hudson Valley, but we do find professional bakers in many other East Coast cities advertising these cakes. A baker in Philadelphia advertised in 1840 that he “sells the real New York New Year’s Cakes, the genuine Knickerbockers, of all sizes, from a cartwheel to a levenpenny bit.”²⁵

The eleven-cent piece he referred to was pretty sm