Five Danish Birthday Traditions, Explained

Unique & Festive Traditions

Hi everyone! Today we wanted to dive into some fun Danish birthday traditions and explain some of them to you. Birthdays are a big deal in Denmark, especially for kids! There are more traditions than we have space for, but we wanted to take you through the common ones. Many of them relate to baked goods, of course, but some others are just unique and fun to talk about! Every family also has their own customs and traditions though, so this certainly is not a precise list for everyone. If you think one or several of these traditions sounds like fun, try them out next time you can!

1. Lagkage (Layer Cake)

Every kid has a particular memory associated with birthdays. For me (and probably all of my siblings), it’s Danish birthday cake! No birthday is complete without one of these. This cake is a layer cake. It consists of four layers of vanilla sponge, sandwiched together with three layers of vanilla pastry cream and raspberry jam. Then just pour a simple powdered sugar icing and decorate with freshly whipped and unsweetened whipped cream around the sides. Add some candles and voila! The best cake ever.

We always make it the night or day before, as it tastes a million times better when the ingredients have had time to soften up and blend together a little bit. This may sound a bit weird, but it’s supposed to be a soft and moist cake and letting it sit for about 24 hours makes it just the perfect consistency. We have a recipe – click the link here – and we promise that you’ll never go back to any other birthday cake after trying this one!

2. Kagemand or Kagekone

Of course, the second birthday tradition on this list is also a type of cake 😂 We are so predictable! This is a cake that kids love to have at their birthday parties, called a cake man or cake woman. The cake is baked in the shape of a person, so with arms, legs, a torso, and a head. You can make the base with different types of dough – we love brunsviger but vandbakkelsesdej (used in our vandbakkelser recipe) is also delicious!

Then you can decorate the top with various fun things – marzipan, icing, candy, lots and lots of licorice – so that it resembles a person! The birthday party includes the decapitation of the kagemand or kagekone while everyone screams. Then everyone gets a piece of delicious birthday cake! It’s such a fun tradition and making the cake at home is also really fun for the birthday kid, as they can help decorate it to look how they want!

3. Birthday Breakfast

Another massive birthday tradition in Denmark is having a birthday breakfast with your family. Many parents will wake their kids up singing a birthday song to them and then they will all eat breakfast together. The table is usually decorated with Danish flags (I’ll get to that tradition next) and decked out with plenty of food. A favorite birthday breakfast food is fødselsdagsboller, or birthday rolls, which are super soft and fluffy and flavored with cardamom. Danes love bread, of course, so breakfast usually consists of eating plenty of bread with different toppings. These rolls are also made for birthday parties. Growing up, we also always got to open any presents we received at breakfast.

4. Danish Flags

Denmark’s national flag, called “Dannebrog”, is one of the oldest flags still in use in the world. Legend has it that during a battle in 1219, a red banner with a white cross fell from the sky and helped Denmark to victory. This then became Denmark’s flag! This is probably a myth and did not actually happen, but it is a story that Danes love to tell and pass on from generation to generation.

Anyway, if you travel to Denmark, you can expect to see Dannebrog everywhere. This is because the flag is not only used in official capacities, like outside palaces of the royal family or government building; everyday citizens also use it to celebrate, commemorate, or even mourn. While the flag does symbolize Denmark, it is not always used in a patriotic way; for many Danes, it simply represents happiness and celebration. As a result, Danish flags are everywhere at a birthday party, from the napkins to the hanging decorations to the cake.

5. Cinnamon and Pepper Birthdays

This is perhaps one of Denmark’s most unique birthday traditions – cinnamon and pepper birthdays! Your cinnamon birthday occurs when you turn 25 and if you are unmarried. Basically, your friends grab you, tie you to a post or make you sit down in a chair outside, and absolutely cover you in cinnamon. It’s also common to first pour water on you or mix cinnamon with eggs so that the cinnamon sticks to you even better. Then, on your 30th birthday, if you are still unmarried, your friends or family will usually give you a giant fake pepper mill. This sounds very strange, and it is, but it is a tradition that can be traced back through history. In short, the spice merchants who used to trade spices and therefore travel a lot were often bachelors and remained single for a long time. This tradition stems from that!

Thanks for reading today’s post; we hope you enjoyed it! And we hope that you learned something new about Danish birthday traditions.