American Cake-Baking since 1980

With the advent of the so-called food revolution, the recipe industry split into two often-opposed factions. The multinational food corporations pumped out cakes based almost exclusively on their mixes and enhanced by their ever-expanding roster of products, including such unlikely items as frozen juice concentrates, bubble-gum–flavored soda pop, powdered gelatin mixes, and gummy candy worms. The corporations publicized these recipes in the same ways as previously, both by dint of their own massive efforts and with the aid of those newspapers, cookbook publishers, magazines, and websites interested in their recipes. Meanwhile, a new constellation of publishing and media entities geared to “foodies” and others less enamored of processed food cooking—cookbooks, print magazines, websites, food blogs, and television food shows—disseminated recipes for scratch cakes. In the more conservative of these entities, such as the long-established general-purpose cookbooks and women’s-interest magazines, most of the cake recipes drew on a repertory stretching back over a century, albeit updated with increased proportions of rich ingredients and with refined techniques. Somewhat surprisingly, the same was true of most cake recipes featured in more determinedly epicurean venues, including food magazines, even if they also featured a few novel cakes made with uncustomary grains like cornmeal or brown rice flour, or shortened with olive oil or walnut oil, or flavored with rosemary or even, by the early 2000s, bacon.