If Marie Antoinette had been around in the 1940s, she more likely would have scoffed, “Let them eat cake mix.”
Not the stuff of kings and queens, perhaps. But the cake mix was one of a handful of quick-fix food products that reinvented the way Americans cooked, sending prepared-from-scratch meals on the path toward oblivion they seem so destined toward today.
Add eggs and oil. Pop in the oven. Bake. Out comes a cake with no fussing, little measuring, no flour snowfall. Best of all, cake jitters never materialize. As an early Betty Crocker ad touted, “A perfect cake every time you bake. . .cake after cake. . .after cake.’
In time, cake mixes became “war horses,” recalls Jerry Di Vecchio, food editor for 40 years at Sunset Magazine. “There was a period when everybody turned to a cake mix.”
But one era’s convenience is another’s dated trend; the category of baking products that includes cake mixes has been on the decline for years. Though still more convenient than preparing a cake from scratch, cake mixes involve too much baking, industry officials say, for many consumers today.
When mixes from Betty Crocker and Pillsbury appeared on store shelves in 1948 and 1949, consumers hailed their convenience. Though mixes to make biscuits and pancakes had been around since about 1930, the packaged cake mix stirred things up like an electric beater.
Entertaining became easier. The idea of not making everything from scratch grew to be accepted as more mixes, canned goods and frozen products flooded the market. In the home kitchen, certain tasks, such as sifting flour, grew obsolete.
“The mixes pushed the basics aside,” Di Vecchio says. “Cake flour is not around like it used to be.. . .And (home cooks) are less and less sure how to measure. I think cake mixes put sifting out of business.”
Some years earlier, a Betty Crocker booklet described the 1920s as “the beginning of the real cake era.” In her book “Fashionable Food,” Sylvia Lovegren describes the many made-from-scratch cake recipes found in cookbooks post-World War I and pre-World War II: spice, sponge, fudge, date, prune, jam, chocolate, eggless, sunshine, marble, maple, mocha and maraschino.
It had become fashionable to have just one dessert: cake. Pictorial Review’s April 1928 issue, Lovegren writes, assured the “worried hostess that her cake could be made tall and imposing, so that `everyone who beholds it will be convinced that such a cake only, is sufficient for the complete course.’ ” By the early 1940s, according to one industry statistic, American homemakers were baking nearly 1 billion cakes a year.
Historic changes
With the advent of World War II, life turned upside-down, even in the kitchen.
“So many women had entered the work force. . .and after the war, with the increased prosperity, women were getting involved in other activities,” says Pam Becker, spokeswoman for General Mills, Inc., which manufactures the products under the fictitious Betty Crocker name. “Even if they were staying at home, they needed something convenient.”
Test labs hummed at major manufacturers, each working to perfect the boxed mix. It’s believed one company tried packing a liquid cake mix in a can in the 1930s, but it never appeared. Toward the end of the ’40s, General Mills introduced two flavors–devil’s food and “party cake” (which could be made into three different cakes); Pillsbury introduced white cake mix. They sold for 35 cents to 39 cents a box.
Quickly companies were learning what worked and what didn’t; though cake mixes eased the load in the kitchen, consumers still wanted to feel they’d done something more than open a box of sugar, flour and shortening blended together. Powdered eggs were used in early versions of mixes, but were removed so home cooks could crack open their own eggs.
“Women were beginning to accept that it was OK to do something that wasn’t from scratch,” Becker says. “They were relieving their guilt.”
Though the party cake from Betty Crocker offered variety (add whole eggs for a yellow cake, egg whites for a white cake and spices for a spice cake), consumers wanted more. Pudding cakes from scratch were the rage in the ’50s, but so were recipes calling for lime, orange and pineapple, Lovegren writes.
Yellow mixes debuted in the ’50s, along with cake-mix flavors such as Honey Spice (1953), Marble (1954) and Chocolate Malt (1955). Angel food cake mixes also became a hit.
Since back-yard barbecues were taking the cooking out of the kitchen, often turning it over to the man of the house, cake mixes kept the female kitchen cook’s finger in the batter, but freed her from indoor bother. Depending on the mood, a cake mix–often a plain canvas to be embellished–could be doctored to fit the fun.
Getting creative
A favorite became the Color Vision Cake, developed in Betty Crocker kitchens. Hailed as “the discovery of the year” by the company, it was said to have a magic ingredient to produce a colorful, elegant dessert. The secret? A box of fruit-flavored gelatin, 3 tablespoons of which were stirred in–dry–to the cake batter, resulting in hues as bright as poodle skirts.
Besides Jell-O, ingredients such as soda pop and canned pie filling turned ordinary cake mixes into extraordinary cakes everyone could make.
From church buffets to family picnics to cocktail parties, cakes with kooky names became the norm. Poke cakes. Dump cakes. The Velvet Cream Cake–four layers laced with frosting from the new line of packaged frosting mixes. Vodka spiked the ubiquitous Harvey Wallbanger cake of the 1970s; the title “Better Than (fill in the blank) Cake” graced another popular cake–usually “sex” or “Robert Redford” filled in the blank.
“But what’s amazing is that the more you think things change, the more they stay the same,” says Matt Smith, vice president of baking for Aurora Foods Inc., makers of Duncan Hines cake mixes. “It’s really all about three cakes–chocolate, yellow and white.”
Familiar flavors
Yellow is the top-selling flavor of cake mixes, followed by white, then devil’s food, according to the industry. As a category chocolate cake mixes sell the most, but there are a number of kinds of chocolate, making it hard for any flavor to top yellow.
“White cakes are clearly for an anniversary or wedding. Yellow is just neutral, and lots of times, a chocolate frosting goes on top,” says Smith. Aurora Foods makes 150 million boxes of Duncan Hines mix annually.
Aurora bought the Duncan Hines label in 1997 from Proctor & Gamble; Duncan Hines was a traveling salesman turned restaurant critic who, in 1950, lent his name to a cake mix that prided itself on a good crumb and a melt-in-your-mouth quality. Another now well-known cake-mix name, Jiffy, debuted in 1955 from Chelsea Milling Co.
“The biggest complaints about cake mixes have always been that they’re dry,” says Smith, who has worked for other major cake-mix manufacturers. “For cake scientists, that’s what we try to work on.” Shortening was homogenized, then emulsified. Pudding was added to the mix in the 1970s.
Today’s cake
Cake-mix sales have been slipping the past 30 years, says Howdy Holmes, president and chief executive officer of Chelsea Milling Co., a fourth-generation family-owned company that manufactures Jiffy products.
The reasons: People don’t cook as much, preferring to buy prepared cakes from grocery stores and bakeries. Or, if they bake, they turn to more expensive but more convenient products such as frozen pie crusts–the division of the home-baking industry that has seen a slight rise in sales, Holmes says.
And, cakes hardly ever are served for dessert; they’ve become something just for special occasions.
“What’s gone away is doing something nice for your family,” Holmes says.
The industry has responded by constantly renovating mixes: “Lite” cakes or cakes with fewer calories and less fat mirrored the health craze of the late ’70s, followed by a period of indulgence in the mid-’80s when deluxe lines of cake mixes with three times the ingredients of conventional mixes were introduced. Another round of light mixes began selling early this decade, along with a microwave cake mix from Betty Crocker. Reduced-fat mixes joined the lineup, too, as consumers seesawed between health trends.
One-step stir-and-bake cakes have appeared in the past few years (a paper pan is included in the box), and mixes with candy and other edible stir-ins seem popular, industry officials say. Boxed frosting went bye-bye in the mid-’80s, with tubs of ready-to-spread frosting making huge inroads. Smith estimates that about 60 percent of all cakes baked from boxes are frosted from tubs.
One industry strategy is to lead consumers back to the kitchen. Duncan Hines’ new line of commercials features smiling faces of kids with a song, “You’re Why I Bake a Cake.”
“We try to push the concept that you’re making this choice for a bigger, better reason,” Smith says.
LEMON CREAM BARS
Preparation time: 35 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Yield: 36 bars
Lemon cream bars have been a popular Pillsbury Co. recipe through the years.
Base:
1 package (18.25 ounces) pudding-included lemon cake mix
1/2 cup margarine or butter, softened
1 egg
1/2 cup sliced almonds, chopped
Filling:
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated)
1 tablespoon grated lemon peel
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 egg
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine cake mix, margarine and egg in large bowl. Beat at low speed until crumbly. Stir in almonds. Reserve 1 1/2 cups for topping; set aside. Press remaining mixture in bottom of greased 13-by-9-inch pan. Bake 10 minutes; cool 5 minutes.
2. Beat cream cheese in small bowl until light and fluffy. Add remaining filling ingredients; beat at medium speed until smooth. Pour evenly over partly baked crust; sprinkle with reserved topping. Bake additional 20-30 minutes or until center is set. Cool completely; cut into bars. Store in refrigerator.
Nutrition information per bar:
Calories ………… 150 Fat …………. 8 g Saturated fat … 3 g
% calories from fat .. 45 Cholesterol … 22 mg Sodium ……. 155 mg
Carbohydrates …… 18 g Protein ……. 2.5 g Fiber ……… 0.3 g
50TH ANNIVERSARY CHOCOLATE GANACHE CAKE
Preparation time: 35 minutes
Cooking time: 35 minutes
Yield: 12 servings
This cake was developed by the Betty Crocker Test Kitchens to celebrate the 50th anniversary of mixes in 1999.
1 package (18.25 ounces) pudding-included devil’s food cake mix
1 tub (15 ounces) ready-to-spread chocolate frosting
1/3 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Optional: Toffee candy bar, such as Hershey’s Skor, broken into bits
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour 2 (8- or 9-inch) baking pans. Prepare and bake cake as directed on package; follow directions for cooling.
2. Brush crumbs from cake. Place 1 layer, top side down, on plate. Spread 1/3 cup frosting almost to edge. Place other layer, top side up, on frosted layer. Frost side with thin coat first to seal crumbs, then frost side and top, spreading top smooth and flat.
3. Heat whipping cream in 1-quart saucepan over medium heat until hot (do not boil). Remove from heat; stir in chocolate chips until melted and smooth. Let stand 5 minutes. Pour carefully onto top center of frosted cake; spread to edge, allowing some to drizzle down side. Garnish with toffee bits. Refrigerate uncovered about 1 hour or until chocolate is set. Refrigerate any remaining cake.
Nutrition information per serving:
Calories ………… 370 Fat ……….. 15 g Saturated fat .. 6 g
% calories from fat .. 34 Cholesterol … 9 mg Sodium …… 395 mg
Carbohydrates …… 60 g Protein …… 2.9 g Fiber ………. 2 g
PECAN PIE SURPRISE BARS
Preparation time: 35 minutes
Cooking time: 45 minutes
Yield: 36 servings
Pecan Pie Bars were the first Pillsbury Bake-off winning recipe to use a cake mix.
Cake:
1 package (18.25 ounces) pudding-included yellow or 1 package (18.2 ounces) butter flavor cake mix
1/3 cup margarine or butter, softened
1 egg
Filling:
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cups dark corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs
1 cup chopped pecans
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Reserve 2/3 cup of the cake mix for filling. Combine remaining dry cake mix, margarine and 1 egg in a large bowl. Beat at low speed until well-blended. Press in bottom of greased 13-by-9-inch pan. Bake 15-20 minutes or until light golden brown.
2. Combine reserved 2/3 cup dry cake mix, brown sugar, corn syrup, vanilla and 3 eggs in large bowl. Beat at low speed until moistened. Beat 1 minute at medium speed or until well-blended. Pour filling mixture over warm base; sprinkle with pecans. Bake additional 30-35 minutes or until filling is set. Cool completely. Cut into bars. Store in refrigerator.
Nutrition information per bar:
Calories ………… 155 Fat …………. 6 g Saturated fat .. 1 g
% calories from fat .. 33 Cholesterol … 25 mg Sodium …… 150 mg
Carbohydrates …… 26 g Protein ……. 1.6 g Fiber …….. 0.4 g
