A "Witch Cake", which was hung behind a cottage door to prevent witches from entering the dwelling. Bempton, Yorks. 1850
But, hey, hanging cake would be more likely to make me pop round for a cuppa...However, let’s get the history straight.
Anti-witchcraft cakes dating back to the 1620s. They exist alongside other charms, such as hag stones and witch bottles. The latter were similar to the cakes, in that they also used a bewitched person’s urine, along with materials such as hair, iron nails, and bent pins.
The term “witch cakes” is more of a modern rebranding. They were mostly known as “urine cakes” or, if the writer was feeling fancy, a cake made with a person’s “water.” While a far cry from a delicious cake ingredient, urine was the crucial element in warding off witches. The belief in the cake’s efficacy was rooted in sympathetic magic: whoever the witch is, the belief is that there’s a sympathetic connection, an invisible connection, between that person and the bewitched person. Following this logic, the best way to break that connection was to take a physical representation of the bewitched (i.e., their urine) and manipulate it in some way.