Learn to bake... You'll love it!

Learn To Bake... You'll Love It! is yet another beautiful cookbook from the 1940s (1947, to be exact). The book features interesting line drawings and plentiful photos, many in vibrant colors. This a General Foods publication with emphasis on Swans Down flour, Calumet baking soda, and Baker's chocolate.

Thank you to my sister for use of this book!

1. Front and back covers - A nice integration of two styles of illustration


2. 'Learn To Bake - You'll love it!' - Introduction


3. Some of the tools of the trade, including the sponsored products and Diamond salt.


4. Artful ways to frost and decorate - A brightly colored frosting tutorial is shown (right) next to an illustration of a cake decorator.


5. 6 Wonderful Birthday Cakes - A jubilant page of partially-eaten cakes. All are nicely decorated and are on lovely plates. I wonder how often the 'Daisies Won't Tell' cake is really made.


6. The popular 1776 cake


7. Handsome to look at, stll better to eat - A page devoted to nicely baked biscuits


8. Mixer Cakes - A tigerlike Silver Moon Cake. As you can see from this page, the cookbook is beautifully designed with attractive typography.


9. An arty Angel Food Loaf


10. Pretty as a rose - with tinted coconut


11. Chocolate Pinwheels amid nice kitchenwares


12. Golden pastries and breads

Better Baking (1952)

Here is another old baking booklet from 1952. Better Baking was put together by the home economics department of Proctor & Gamble's Crisco, a canned vegetable shortening. The front cover shows lushly colored cookies and other baked goods. The insides are filled with charming, though odd, illustrations of women with no facial features, hobos, and anthropomorphic baking implements.

1. Front and back covers


2. Essentials of Better Baking


3. Baking Equipment - This is my favorite drawing from the book.


4. "Two-From-One" Yellow Cake - Odd illustration of a (mostly) bodiless and faceless woman.


5. How Does Your Cake Rate?


6. Cake Problems: Causes and Corrections


7. Pies - Soon to be stolen by this hobo!


8. Another mostly featureless woman peruses the entire collection of "Suggested Baking References for Class Assignments."

Love Brownies?

Here's a little one-sheet pamphlet from 1952 called Love Brownies? It was sponsored by Baker's Chocolate (General Foods Corp). It has some fun elements: whimsical drawings of people enjoying brownies, more realistic brownie images, and a nice tricolored design.

Family Circle (1977)

Family Circle magazines have always been filled with 'great ideas,' but the January 1977 special edition called 333 Super Cakes & Cookies really takes the cake. Like every Family Circle, it's chock-full of mouthwatering baked goods, but it's the clever decorating and presentations that really makes the pictures a sight to behold!

1. Front cover


2. Colorful Canisters for Keeping or Giving - One of the best pages in the magazine! They actually bothered to import these canisters from England!


3. Circus Cake - I guess this is pretty clever, but the clown faces are kind of creepy.


4. Pumpkin Cake - Is that supposed to be a pilgrim?


5. Shirley Jones advertisement for Sunbeam appliances!

1970s Bundt Cakes

Whoever said cake pans are only for plain birthday cakes? I'm not sure anybody said that, but the grim Over 300 Delicious Ways To Use Your Bundt Pans was Nordicware's answer to those hypothetical naysayers. In this 1973 cookbook, the company that brought us many a fancy bundt pan challenged everyone's preconceptions of what a cake had to be, and, in doing so, might have alienated many cakelovers.

1. Back cover - I had to post the back cover because the front cover looked more appetizing and did not have a globe.


2. The butler is in attendance as the girl meets with the Georgian Chocolate Pound Cake (which may or may not be her mother).


3. In the light of the servant's quarters, the butler reveals himself to be Jason Lee of tv's My Name Is Earl! Maybe he wronged this Walnut Bourbon Pound Cake in the past and is now forced to see to its every need.


4. Yes, this is REAL Bean Bread made with liquified Pork n' Beans!


5. Gelatin and Lazy Days Meat Ring - Who knew 'lazy days' meant ground chuck, beer, powdered spaghetti sauce mix, and cheese sauce!


6. The Lively Salad - 'Lively' because there's a live jellyfish trapped in its gelatine walls.


7. Basic Gelatin - Away from everyone's favorite feel-good snack, Jell-O brand Jell-O, gelatin takes on a far more sinister character. It's said that there are fruits inside this gelatin, but I see something more disturbing. Look closely. Do you see a skull in among the peaches? If not, click here for a closer look.


8. Can you imagine the designer setting up this scene.. placing the big-eyed squirrels just close enough to the plate so that you can't really tell the felt woodland creatures from the Individual Ham Loaves? It just seems unnatural.


9. Meet the descendant of Oriental Shrimp Sandwich Roll! This is Tuna Soufflé Salad. As you can see, it is smaller than its predecessor, and since its color is less conspicuous, it can camouflage itself more successfully. One interesting feature of note is its extendable eye, which often gives it an advantage over its prey. I believe this is a picture of its mating ritual.


10. Pumpkin House Cake - scaring little children since 1973


11. This clown cake is the scariest of all, though. Look at that styrofoam head and gaping mouth! Stare deep into those soulless icing eyes!

Pillsbury Bake-Off (1967)

Pillsbury debuted its Bake-Off competition in 1949. Housewives around the country perfected and submitted their best family recipes. The only requirements seemed to be corny dish names and the inclusion of a Pillsbury product, such as all-purpose flour or prepackaged biscuit dough, which was introduced in the early 1950s. The one hundred best recipes were then published in the yearly cookbook. While these annual collections of prize-winning recipes are pretty indistinguishable from one another, this particular volume (of the ones I've looked through) seems most definitive of its time period -- the late 1960s. Published in 1967, the '18th Annual Bake-Off Cookbook' promotes both the busy modern woman and the homemaking ethic. From its foreword: "The way in which these recipes are prepared has changed just as dramatically as your life as a homemaker has changed from that of your grandmother."

I'm not sure what the top prize was back then, but this year (the 42nd year of competition) it was $1 million! If you're interested in the modern cooking contest culture, there was an interesting article over at Slate on this topic.

(Click on photos to enlarge!)


1. Front cover


2. Scenes of housewifedom


3. Vichyssoise Feather Fans, Ol' Virginny Lemon Tea Cake, Cape Cod Loaf (with oysters!)


4. Corny Islands - looks like dried brains!


5. Peachadillies - won Corniest Name prize


6. Caballero Casserole - This is made with Hormel Tamales and 'cheese sauce mix.'


7. 'Fortune's sausage wheel is ever turning.' Also: Hot Turkey Hustle Up!


8. Fisherman's Luck and Tijuana Hash - Both sound unsettling and possibly illegal.


9. "The Works" Casserole - If the name doesn't send you running, maybe the fact that it looks like something floating in battery acid will!


10. Oriental Shrimp Sandwich Roll - It can sense your fear (and probably see out of that eye)!


11. Bachelor's Bake - made with potato flakes, Spam, and cream cheese!


12. General Electric P7 Self-Cleaning Oven Range in lovely avocado green - Isn't it time you owned an Americana?

EDIT: As a matter of course, I discovered that the winner of the first Pillsbury Bake-Off was Theodora Smafield of Rockford, Illinois. Her winning recipe was the No-knead Water-rising Twists, and the top prize was $50,000, which was surely a lot of money back in the 1940s!