BUNDT PANS

 “In 1950, a group of Minneapolis (Minnesota) women, members of Hadassah, approached Nordic Products owner H. David Dalquist and asked him to make an aluminum version of the cast-iron kugelhopf pan common in Europe.  Obligingly, he made a few for the members and a few extra for the public.  Not many of these fluted pans sold until ten years later when the new Good Housekeeping Cookbook showed a pound cake that had been baked in one of them.  Suddenly every woman wanted a pan just like it.

What really put the Bundt pan on the culinary map of America, however, was the Tunnel of Fudge cake, which made the finals of the 1966 Pillsbury Bakeoff Contest. Bundt, by the way, is now a registered trademark of Northland Aluminum Products, Inc., Minneapolis.  By 1972, the grand prize winner of the Pillsbury Bakeoff Contest was a Bundt Streusel Spice cake and eleven top winners also called for a Bundt pan; that same year Pillsbury sold $25 million worth of its new Bundt cake mixes.” 

Jean Anderson, The American Century Cookbook

SMALL FROG FOR FLOWERS

As the above pictures indicate, I often decorate Bundt cakes with fresh flowers. Check your local florist for a small frog that fits nicely into the center of the cake.  It will hold the flowers in place and allow a little water to keep them fresh longer.