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Cakes are a food for holidays, a food for sharing. Like a roast turkey or a barbecue, a cake is not a solitary pleasure. Cakes are a food of celebration, marking the special times in our lives with extravagance and cheer.
While some Bake-Off® prize-winning cakes, like 1950's Orange Kiss-Me Cake and 1953's "My Inspiration" Cake, were simple cakes to round out a meal, most Bake-Off® cakes have been lavish creations, the product of a homemaker's expansive love and a bit of time. The 1951 contest's Starlight Double- Delight Cake and 1959's Mardi Gras Party Cake are both beautifully frosted, elaborate cakes. The Tunnel of Fudge Cake, from the 1966 contest, may have been the ultimate home-grown extravagance, packed full of nuts and fudgy chocolate.
The 1970s marked a real change in cake baking, with more homey cakes gaining in popularity, featuring whole-food ingredients like molasses, bananas and oats, as in 1973's Banana Crunch Cake or 1978's Nutty Graham Picnic Cake. In the 1980s, cooks returned to decadence and looked to Europe for inspiration. With 1984's Dark Chocolate Sacher Torte or 1988's Almond Mocha Cake, American families were treated like European royalty.
Recently, American cooks have been displaying their increased sophistication by combining the best of European and American traditions. The Chocolate Mousse Fantasy Torte, from the 1990s contest, combined an American original--brownies--with a European classic--chocolate mousse. In 1994 Glazed Sweet Potato Mini-Cakes revealed an haute cuisine treatment of indigenous American ingredients: sweet potatoes, maple syrup and pecans.
While ingredients, manners of preparation and tastes have changed over the years, the reasons for presenting a special cake haven't. Celebrations find cake bakers and cake eaters in perfect agreement: cakes are the perfect food for sharing.
From "Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook." Copyright 2004 General Mills. Used with permission of the publisher, Wiley Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Brown Butter Apricot Cake Mardi Gras Party Cake Whole Wheat Walnut Crumb Cake Chocolate Praline Layer Cake Glazed Sweet Potato Mini-Cakes Tropical Fruit Fling Cake Orange Kiss-Me Cake Golden Apricot Cake Caramel Pear Upside-Down Cake Caramel Apple Cake Double Lemon Streusel Cake Peanut Butter Crunch Cake Chocolate Fudge Snack Cake White Chocolate Fudge Cake Starlight Double-Delight Cake Upside-Down German Chocolate Cake My Inspiration Cake Raspberry-Filled Apricot Cake Costa Rican Cream Cake Heavenly Hawaiian Cake Roll Chocolate 'Tato Cake Buttercream Pound Cake Almond Mocha Cake Black Bottom Cups Swiss Almond Apple Cake Nutty Graham Picnic Cake Spicy Raisin Brunch Cake Kentucky Butter Cake Peppermint Swirl Fudge Nut Cake Delicate Pear Cake with Caramel Sauce Banana Crunch Cake Tunnel of Fudge Cake Brownie Soufflé Cake with Mint Cream Streusel Spice Cake Lemon Platinum Cake Chocolate Mousse Fantasy Torte Ring-of-Coconut Fudge Cake Fudgy Orange Cappuccino Torte Mocha Cream Chocolate Torte Key Lime Cream Torte Macadamia Fudge Torte Dark Chocolate Sacher Torte Tiramisù Toffee Torte Praline Torte with Chocolate Truffle Filling White Chocolate Raspberry Torte Tuxedo Brownie Torte 07: Cakes and Tortes
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