"Have his cake and eat it too" idiom

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I am sure many people know what "have his cake and eat it too" means, I do, but I still don't see how this idiom makes any literal sense at all. What does a cake have to do with wanting all the benefits but none of the risks/drawbacks? Can anyone explain this to me?

Looked it up....can't explain it any better than the articles I found:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/magazine/20FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=0

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/01/cake-eat/

I guess the literal sense is that if you eat your cake, you can't expect to still have the cake.

Or maybe "You can't save your cake [for eating later] and eat it [right now], too".

I guess it only works where compromise is not an option.....because if I have a piece of cake that I want to eat right now, but also want to save for later, I can just cut it in two pieces and eat one half now and one half later. It only makes sense if I refuse to settle for half a piece of cake.

I always think it's a strange one as well and makes me laugh out loud sometimes.

I mean, what else would you do with your cake if you're not going to eat it?

The idiom used to be "you can't eat your cake and have it", but some idiot the order mixed up and now we've been saying it the stupid way ever since.

Cake is good. (Unless you don't like cake Noca?)

The cake is a symbol. (You can replace with anything else that you like.)

'Have' is used in the context of 'to keep' not 'to eat'.

Wanting to both consume what you like, and also save it for use at a later date equates to a sign of greed and/or having impossible desires.

I used to wonder that too.

What other way of "having" a cake is there, but to eat it?

But I guess it probably comes from weddings.

Some folks think their wedding cake is so beautiful to look at, and admire, that they dont wanna eat it. Want to preserve it forever as a keepsake.

Hense the dilemma of whether to eat it, or keep it to look at.

My dad told me its suppose to mean like a win win. I never understood it. The only good thing about cake is to eat it, why would i just have a cake and not eat it?

Apparently it's not just ASDers who find this particular proverb confusing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_one' ... eat_it_too

I think the Hungarian version is clearer: "It is impossible to ride two horses with one butt." They mean simultaneously of course. But I think if the horses were very well-trained and the rider was very skilled, and had a very wide butt, it might be possible, for a moment or two.

The Hungarian one makes sense.

This idiom does not. Because a Cake is the Most Compromising. You don't eat a whole cake. You cut it into pieces and eat slices. So wouldn't a cake be the symbol and analogy of compromise? Not why you cannot compromise?

A cake isn't necessarily that big. In my family it certainly was, but apparently a cake can be much smaller. My family referred to such small cakes as "buns," so their nomenclature was internally consistent and functional. Anyway, the cake referred to in the idiom is presumably more or less mouth-sized, so one would be less likely to want to share it.