For one thing, the original French phrase that Marie-Antoinette is supposed to have said—“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”—doesn’t exactly translate as “Let them eat cake.” It translates as, well, “Let them eat brioche.”
(Online, Encyclopaedia Brittanica)
It is also possible that the phrase meant “let them eat the baker’s oven’s burnt leftovers”.
Historians are generally skeptical that Marie Antoinette said that phrase anyway.
