by Susan Marks
From “Betty Crocker’s How to Have the Most Fun with Cake Mixes.”
So that the low points of cake history would not be repeated, Betty devoted an entire 1935 broadcast, “Cake Clinics,” to fixing “sick” cakes.
This morning I am going to talk about the food that strikes the highest note in the entire meal—the cake you serve for dessert. I think among all the foods served at your table, this is one where your reputation as a hostess and as a good provider for your family is most at stake.
Betty’s cures for ailing cakes included: avoiding packing in too much sugar into the measuring cup by spooning as opposed to scooping out of the bag; treating ingredients gently for best results; adding just enough—never too much—leavening; and sifting flour only once.
Emergency Cake was at the ready for impromptu entertaining, but sometimes it took a bit of extra effort to achieve a real party pleaser. Betty Crocker’s Queen of Hearts Cake called for a doll to be inserted in the middle of the cake and “dressed” with an intricate frosting skirt. Pink frosting and red candy hearts could transform this pound cake into the ideal dessert for St. Valentine’s Day or a bridal shower. As Betty’s staff experimented throughout the years to perfect “quick and easy” cake batters, Queen of Hearts Cake was eventually streamlined into Doll Cake, popular at little girls’ birthday parties.
Double-Quick
In 1944, Betty Crocker’s staff discovered a new method for cake baking—Double-Quick, as it came to be known—a one-bowl process that cut prep time in half. In an October 1944 broadcast Betty celebrated twenty years on the radio with a recipe for Anniversary Cake:
It really is beautiful enough and delicious enough to grace any festive occasion. So maybe you’ll want to plan a party around it. Invite your friends over for cake and coffee! And then just listen to the exclamations when you cut your cake and when they take their first bite! Then you can tell them that you made it by our new streamlined method—the quick, easy method of cake-making developed by our staff last year after months of experimenting. You know, this method is revolutionizing cake making all over our country. Everyone is talking about it! Wherever I go, visiting home economics departments of magazines—or in groups of home economists—at luncheon meetings, etc., someone will say (with a glow), “I made one of your new method Soft-as-silk Cakes the other day and really it was just superb!”
And, you know, the best of it all is that it’s so easy! There’s just one bowl to wash—one spoon for mixing (or your electronic mixer)—there’s no longer creaming of the shortening and sugar—and no separate beating of egg whites and egg yolks. It really is streamlined—and all the guesswork is taken out of it!
Promotions for Double-Quick were deferred for the duration of the wartime flour ban. In 1946, Betty reintroduced Double-Quick via full-page magazine ad. “Good News! On the Betty Crocker Silver Anniversary America’s favorite flour is again available … to bring you carefree baking days once more.” Betty Crocker promised “4 Steps in 4 Minutes” for a delicious homemade cake: Sift flour, add ingredients, beat for two minutes, and beat in eggs for another two minutes.
An homage to Double-Quick emerged in the form of a twenty-two-minute 16mm color film to be screened for high school and college home economics classes, women’s clubs, and youth groups: 400 Years in 4 Minutes. It opens with the serving of a gigantic cake at a lavish banquet for King Henry VIII. The film quickly advances four centuries, culminating in a demonstration of Double-Quick in the 1945 Betty Crocker Test Kitchens.
Mystery Cake
Betty Crocker played a part in the notorious rise of one very expensive cake—Chiffon, heralded as “the first new cake in 100 years!” Before 1948, cakes were traditionally classified as either butter or sponge (angel food belongs in the sponge category). But an aptly named cake baker, Harry Baker, from Hollywood, California, challenged conventional cake wisdom and started his own mini baking revolution.
Harry Baker invented a new cake-baking technique and sold it to General Mills in 1948 for a large, undisclosed sum.
Chiffon combined the richness of butter cake with the lightness of sponge cake.
Baker, originally an insurance salesman and recreational cook, enjoyed all cakes, but dreamed of combining the richness of butter cake with the lightness of sponge cake. So he set out to invent a new kind of cake. Baker’s ambitious pursuit took years and produced about three hundred baking disasters; finally, in 1927, his efforts brought forth an upside-down cake that was described as light, tender, delicate, glamorous, and delicious, with sensational volume. Dessert lovers clamored for a taste, hoping to name Baker’s reputed mystery ingredient.
Baker doggedly guarded his secret, fending off the interlopers who were constantly and unsuccessfully “volunteering” at his kitchen. As word of Baker’s miracle cake spread throughout Hollywood, orders soared beyond his capacity to fill them, catapulting him to the rank of most sought-after cake baker on the Hollywood catering circuit. Both MGM and RKO granted screen time to his creations, and chiffon cake was added to the menu at the Brown Derby restaurant.
A cake fit for American royalty, Baker’s confection was served to Eleanor Roosevelt while she was visiting Los Angeles. The First Lady asked Baker to instruct the White House cooking staff in his baking secrets, but Baker respectfully declined. Almost twenty years passed before Baker went public with the recipe, timing the sale of his secret to the lifting of wartime restrictions. After reading the Fortune magazine citation of Betty Crocker as the second most popular woman in America, he decided to pay her a visit.
Rumors of Baker’s Hollywood mystery cake preceded him. Upon his arrival in Minneapolis, intrigued General Mills executives offered him free run of Betty’s kitchens. But Baker preferred to bake nights and Sundays at the Minneapolis Gas Light Company Test Kitchens. Once samples of his cake had earned the Betty Crocker seal of approval, negotiations began. However, General Mills would not strike a deal until the secret ingredient was revealed. With that, Baker exposed his cake for what it was: flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, five egg yolks, a cup of egg whites, lemon rind, cream of tartar, and, instead of shortening—cooking oil.
While Baker contemplated what he would do with the large (undisclosed) sum, Betty’s staffers got to work. Behind closed doors, General Mills’ food chemists and home economists fine-tuned Baker’s somewhat unstable recipe for eleven months. Finally, in 1948, the recipe for Betty Crocker’s Orange Chiffon Cake debuted in Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies’ Home Journal, and McCall’s. The Minneapolis Tribune and others broke the news under the headline Mystery Cake—Secret Ingredient X Revealed for Baking Mammoth Chiffon. Look magazine and various home economics publications also covered the mystery cake story as curious bakers around the nation tried out this famous new recipe. More complex than the basic add-and-cream cake, the chiffon included the crucial step of folding in the eggs. Baker’s addition of two leavenings, cream of tartar and baking powder, assured the rising of the cake, to the great delight of many home bakers.
General Mills conducted market research on the Chiffon Cake sensation and concluded it a success. Homemakers who baked the cake praised its simplicity as well as its pleasing texture:
Very fluffy and delicious. Very easy to make, too.
*
I think the cake is wonderful and has the right name—Chiffon—very light and fluffy.
*
Cake was easily made, light in texture, nice flavor-delicate as all sponges are supposed to be-moist and not a bit dry as some are prone to be.
However, as one candid letter reveals, positive results were not quite a given:
Dear Betty Crocker,
I am writing you because I’m confused. Right now I am in the process of making your new “Miracle Cake” and believe me if it turns out, it will be a miracle! The Thing is in the oven and I am waiting with bated breath.
… To explain, I have no 10-inch tube pan, four inches deep, so The Thing is in two pans, one a loaf pan 8½3½, 3 inches deep. Th
e other is a regular 6-inch tube pan, 3½ inches deep. My oven has no control on it, being vintage 1924. I guess it is lucky to have a door, but I have always used the by guess and by gosh method and have been very fortunate with everything. But this Thing has me scared. At the moment there is the most wonderful odor filling the kitchen. I have just taken a peek and things are happening, the batter is rising all over the place. I forgot to explain that my young son broke the only good clock in the house, so I am timing it by the General Mills Hour [on the radio].
My question is this, can this wonder be made in any other flavor than orange or lemon? My husband is one of those men that likes any cake as long as it is chocolate cake, so although he will eat this or I will ram it down his throat, I would like to know if you can make a chocolate version. …
Although I know as Betty Crocker you are not a real person, believe me you will have either real curses or real praise heaped on your soul depending on the outcome of this venture. You can tell Mr. Baker that he never put his discovery to the test I have put it through.
Thank you so much for helping me through this trying period.
Sincerely yours in hope and desperation,
Name Withheld
The anonymous letter writer soon got her wish, as Gold Medal Flour recipe inserts and “Chiffon Cakes by Betty Crocker” circulated chiffon recipes in a host of flavors: Coconut Chiffon, Spicy Chiffon, Chocolate Chip Chiffon, Maple Pecan Chiffon, Royal Hawaiian Chiffon, Banana Chiffon, Sunburst Chiffon, Burnt Sugar Chiffon, Holiday Fruit Chiffon, Bit O’ Walnut Chiffon, Cocoa Chiffon, Peppermint Chip Chiffon, and Cherry Nut Chiffon. Like any fad, the popularity of chiffon cake did not endure. Within fifteen years or so, Betty’s public lost interest and Chiffon quietly slipped away.
The Great Cake Mix Controversies
By 1952, the average U.S. grocery stocked 4,000 items, up from approximately 870 in 1928. The old-fashioned way of food shopping, with consumers following the advice of their trusted grocer, was giving way to a more direct interaction with the marketing incentives of prefabricated food and brightly colored packaging that promised newness, ease, and convenience.
Betty Crocker was a triple threat in the burgeoning cake-mix market of the late 1940s.
General Mills, firmly rooted in grain products—Gold Medal Flour, Bisquick, Softasilk, Wheaties, and Cheerios—embraced cake mixes, but Betty was a late arrival to the party. P. Duff and Sons, a molasses company, pioneered the “quick mix” field by marketing the first boxed cake mix in the late 1920s or early 1930s. Continental Mills, the Hills Brothers Company under the Dromedary label, Pillsbury, Occident, Ward Baking Company, and the Doughnut Corporation all produced versions of cake mixes before World War II. But problems of spoilage and packaging abounded, keeping mixes from widespread consumption and acceptance.
In November 1947, after four years of cake mix research and development, General Mills’ test markets were exposed to the “Just Add Water and Mix!” campaign for Betty Crocker’s Ginger Cake. After a final assurance from the corporate chemists that the boxed ingredients would indeed perform as advertised, the mix was made available for limited distribution on the West Coast. Within a year, it made a national debut that excluded the South (presumably, product testing there proved futile). While Ginger Cake required a nine-inch-square pan, designers projected that the PartyCake line, already in development, would offer home bakers a choice of using either two square pans or one 9-inch-by-13-inch rectangular pan, a size and shape that were becoming more popular.
As layer cakes were a uniquely American creation, they seemed a fitting choice for PartyCake, the next wave of Betty Crocker mixes. The layered butter PartyCake mixes—n Spice, Yellow, and White cake varieties—and Devils Food Cake Mix were priced at $.35 to $.37 per red-and-white box. “High impact” colors were essential to enticing “the ladies who trundle their little shopping wagons among the shelves and tables” of the supermarket, wrote the prominent industrial designer Egmont Arens in 1950. Sophisticated “color studies” determined that women were especially drawn to red packages, like the ones that held Betty Crocker cake mixes, while men preferred blue.
A 1953 ad for Betty Crocker’s Devils Food Cake Mix. Many of Betty’s loyal fans took offense at the word “devil” on her packaging.
Plenty of consumers saw red over the use of the word “devil” on cake mix packaging. Legend has it that individuals fearful of Satan worship implored Betty in writing to replace the word “devil” with something less evil-sounding. But the flour company would not budge, considering that “Devils Food” preceded Betty Crocker and was well known as a so-good-it-must-be-a-sin kind of cake. To this day, Devils Food remains one of Betty’s most popular mixes.
The postwar quest for cake mix supremacy unfolded much like the flour wars of the 1920s. In 1948, Pillsbury was the first to introduce a chocolate cake mix. Duncan Hines stormed the market in 1951 with “Three Star Surprise Mix,” a three-flavor wonder that in three weeks captured a 48 percent share. But Betty persevered, steadily rolling out a full range of flavors and varieties: Yellow (1952), White (1952), Honey Spice (1953), Angel Food (1953), Marble (1954), and Chocolate Malt (1955).
The very marketable premise behind cake mixes was, and still is, the ability to have a fresh “home-made” cake with very little time and effort. Though Betty Crocker—like her competitors—promised that cake mixes offered freshness, ease, and flavor in a box, the market was slow to mature. Puzzled, marketers reiterated the message that homemakers need only drop this scientific marvel into a bowl, add water, mix, and bake. But that was still a little too good to be true for Mrs. Consumer America. Certainly, cake mixes sold, but—compared with the early performance of Bisquick or Aunt Jemima pancake mix—not up to industry expectations.
The “quick mix” or “baking mix” industry, eager to correct the shortfall, conducted research even as the development of new mixes continued. General Mills considered the market research of the business psychologists Dr. Burleigh Gardner and Dr. Ernest Dichter to explain the mediocre sales of cake mixes. The problem, according to the psychologists, was eggs. Dichter, in particular, believed that powdered eggs, often used in cake mixes, should be left out, so women could add a few fresh eggs into the batter, giving them a sense of creative contribution. He believed, too, that baking a cake was an act of love on the woman’s part; a cake mix that only needed water cheapened that love.
Whether the psychologists were right, or whether cakes made with fresh eggs simply taste better than cakes made with dried eggs, General Mills decided to play up the fact that Betty Crocker’s cake mixes did not contain dried egg whites, egg yolks, or dried eggs of any kind. (Betty’s GingerCake was an anomaly because it didn’t necessarily require eggs, powdered or other-wise.) Before long, cake mix started to gain some acceptance and notoriety; even Mamie Eisenhower instructed her cooking staff to use this novel invention at the White House. An “independent market organization” conducted research with hundreds of homemakers in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and St. Paul, comparing Betty Crocker brand cake mixes with two other brands that used dried eggs in their cake mixes. Betty Crocker, once again, reigned supreme.
Some of Betty’s competing cake mixes required no eggs, just the addition of water or milk.
But despite surveys, First Lady endorsements, reformulated mixes, and rising sales, controversy over cake mix persisted. Eggs or no eggs, not everyone was content to slide down the slippery slope of the “modern way.” Reducing to a powdery mix such an affectionate act as baking for one’s family disturbed some longtime Betty Crocker fans. The very idea that she would endorse such a cheap, quick, and easy baking substitute flew in the face of everything they knew about wholesome, wise, and traditional Betty Crocker.
And even if women decided that cake mixes were fine in a pinch, would those who found cake mixes akin to shoddy, careless homemaking pass cruel judgment? Would cake-mix families compare unfavorably to those eating made-from-scratch cakes? Some husbands did not like the idea of the
ir wives using boxed cake mix any better than than they did serving a store-bought cake. Cake mixes, like other convenience foods, were a risk that some homemakers were not willing to take.
Still, such trepidation did not stop cake mixes from steadily merging into mainstream popularity. From 1945 to 1951, consumers purchased 937 million pounds of cake mix; use of mixes increased 343 percent. Not everyone was proudly waving the proofs of purchase. Some took to using cake mixes in secret and passing off the results as their own creation. And incidents of clandestine cake mix use were not isolated! Busybodies excused themselves from parties just long enough to rifle through the kitchen trash can for empty cake mix boxes.
Still, Betty gave her friends permission to mix it up, inviting them along to the festivities: “Let’s have a pink party … it’s so easy with my White Cake Mix.” And so it was. With her convincing command of the trendy cake mix market, Betty Crocker cast aside a few of her traditional trappings, tempting some holdouts to consider that using a mix from time to time was not altogether bad home economics.
From the late 1940s through the 1950s, Betty Crocker did her part to guide her loyal public through the lucrative transition from scratch to mix. Her catchy slogan, “I guarantee—A perfect cake every time you bake … cake … after cake … after cake,” sang out from radio, magazine, and television advertisements for Colorvision Cake Mix (Just add your favorite fruit gelatin!), Angel Food Mix, Peanut Delight Mix, Orange Chiffon Cake Mix, and Marble Cake Mix, along with frosting mixes—Angel Fluff, Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Malt, and Peanut Creme. Always one for keeping the lines of communication open, “Write me one of these days, why don’t you?” Betty urged. “I’d love to hear how your family feels about my white cake (and have your tried our latest—Honey Spice Cake Mix?).”