Bundts (or, at least, the confections that inspired them) may be generations-old Eastern European cakes, but the signature aluminum pan they’re baked in is a modern innovation. Bundt pans were invented by H. David Dalquist and his wife Dotty Dalquist in 1950. Today we use them to make those classic cakes given at a housewarming or social event where hospitality is conveyed.
Dalquist was the owner of Minnesota’s Nordic Ware company, and he cast the pan for the Minneapolis-based Hadassah Society (a group for Jewish women), which wanted to recreate traditional kugelhopf—a dense, ring-shaped cake. Originally, he called his invention a bund pan, for the German word that translates to “bond” or “alliance.” Why did he add the T? No one knows, though some speculate that Dalquist wanted to put some space between the name of his product and the German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi group. Others guess it was for trademarking purposes.
The original focus was on making quality Scandinavian baking items such as krumkake makers, rosette irons, and æbleskiver pans. Family and friends were the early models in print advertisements for the company and Dotty wrote the recipes in the promotional materials. When the company’s booklets said the recipes were “home tested,” they truly were.2
Northland Aluminum was no longer in anyone’s basement. Nordic Ware today has a 270,000-square-foot state-of-the-art manufacturing facility with 14 molding presses, 16 metal-forming presses and six high-production coating lines.
Demand for the distinctly shaped aluminum cakes grew slowly after that initial order, but it wasn’t until 1966 when production really blew up—thanks to a Bundt cake placing second in the 17th annual Pillsbury Bake-Off. The gooey, chocolaty cake (called the Tunnel of Fudge Cake) inspired women around the country to try making their own Bundt cakes. Dalquist was inundated with orders and started making 30,000 Bundt pans a day.
Two other things happened that put Bundt on the baking map. In 1966, Texan Ella Helfrich took second prize in the Pillsbury Bake-Off with her Tunnel of Fudge Cake, baked in a Bundt pan. And the Dalquists began entertaining hotshots from the Minneapolis-based Pillsbury at home, serving up elegant Bundt cakes for dessert.
Shop a selection of Nordicware Bundt Pans here.
The effort worked. Pillsbury created an entire line of Bundt cake mixes — Chocolate Macaroon, Chocolate Eclair, Black Forest Cherry and Chocolate Caramel Nut Bundt were a few — promoting the cake mixes together with the Nordic Ware pan. Pillsbury was buying the Nordic Ware Bundt pans to sell in “combination packs” with its cake mix. But, says Dalquist Sr., “No matter how many pans Pillsbury ordered, the amount was underestimated.” For about 18 months in the early 1970s, in a kind of Bundt-mix mania, Nordic Ware was working to capacity, manufacturing 30,000 Bundt pans daily to keep up with the demand. According to Pillsbury, the company got some 200,000 requests at one point for the elusive pans, as housewares departments nationwide were gleaned of their stock.
Earlier this year Pillsbury elected to take the Bundt cake mixes out of their product line, 25 years after their mad dash to domestic fame (the company still includes Bundt pan instructions in its regular cake mixes). Pillsbury spokesperson Marlene Johnson speculates that the Bundt cake mixes declined from their sales in the l970s as consumers shifted from large family-style cakes to smaller convenience mixes that were “snackier” (such as the current Snackwell’s mixes, and myriad cookie and brownie mixes now on the market).3
Dalquist died in 2005 at the age of 86, still overseeing the production of his hit pan.1 Nevertheless, today more than 70 million households have a Bundt pan in their bakeware collection.
Sources Cited
- Sterling, June. “A Brief Delightful History of the Bundt Pan.” Food and Wine Magazine. https://www.foodandwine.com/news/brief-delightful-history-bundt-pan. Updated on May 23, 2017. Accessed December 7, 2022.
- Smith, Carstens. Bundt History, Kugelhopfs, Tunnels of Fudge, and the Art of the Bundt. Norway House. INGEBRETSEN’S BLOG. Norway House. https://www.norwayhouse.org/bundt/history September 3, 2019. Accessed October 4, 2020.
- Goldman, Marcy. “The Birth of the Bundt Pan.” (A Pan with a Past). Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1997/06/11/the-birth-of-the-bundt-a-pan-with-a-past/e9c6da7c-c3a7-4328-9bd8-b753a4ddd2ba/. June 11, 1997. Accessed July 6, 2020.
