Bundt Pan

Many Americans can recognize a Bundt pan or have one at home. But few know that this iconic cake pan, created by H. David Dalquist, founder of the Nordic Ware Company, is rooted in Minnesota’s Jewish immigrant history. The design for the ring-shaped mold came from a pan called the Gugelhupf, which was brought to the United States by Jewish immigrants from Europe.

Gugelhupf pans were made of cast iron, and each one weighed more than fifteen pounds. Jewish immigrants traditionally used them to bake heavy cakes similar to pound cakes. In the late 1940s, in Minneapolis, immigrants lamented not being able to find the pans. Three of them were Rose Joshua, Fannie Shanfield, and Mary Abrahamson from the Hadassah Society of Minnesota, a Jewish women’s volunteer organization.

In 1950, the women approached H. David Dalquist to create reproductions of a pan the Abrahamson family brought to the United States from Germany. The group intended to use them to bake cakes to sell for a fundraiser. Hadassah held fundraisers to pay for schools and hospitals in Israel.

Dalquist owned a small company called Northland Aluminum Products (later Nordic Ware) that manufactured die-cast aluminum Scandinavian kitchen items. He was unsure how successful this old world cake pan would be in the United States. However, Dalquist was not in a position to turn down business.

Dalquist created a cast-aluminum version of Abrahamson’s pan and sold it to department stores. The Hadassah women decided that selling pans would be a better fundraiser than selling cakes, so Dalquist gave them the imperfect factory seconds.

The word Bundt comes from the German word Bund, which refers to a gathering of people. Dalquist added the ‘T’ so he could trademark the name and also avoid being linked with the German American Bund, a Nazi organization.

The pan was relatively unknown until 1966, when Ella Rita Helfrich of Houston won second place in the seventeenth Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest. She created a recipe for the Tunnel of Fudge cake, which was made in a Bundt pan with only five ingredients (plus Pillsbury dry frosting mix). The cake formed a soft fudge center as it baked. As the recipe became popular, Pillsbury received more than 200,000 letters from consumers asking where they could find a Bundt pan.

Dalquist’s wife, Dotty, spent hours in the kitchen developing recipes for the Bundt pan. In October of 1969, David pitched the idea for a line of boxed Bundt cake mixes to two Pillsbury executives. Dotty baked the cakes for the pitch, which took place on her husband’s boat on Lake Superior.

The pitch was well received. In 1971, Pillsbury launched the line of Bundt cake mixes that they continued to produce for fifteen years.

In 1972, Pillsbury and Nordic Ware partnered to offer a promotion. They gave consumers the chance to buy a box of cake mix and a Bundt pan together at supermarkets for $1.98. Nordic Ware needed to invest in additional equipment to be able to produce enough pans for the promotion. The investment paid off and helped the business grow.

Dalquist said the Pillsbury promotion helped Nordic Ware grow from a small, family-owned business into a medium-sized regional manufacturer and even, to some extent, a national manufacturer.

Nordic Ware continues to produce Bundt pans in the United States, with more than 90 percent of its products still manufactured in Minneapolis. As of 2016, more than 70 million Bundt pans in 100 unique designs have been sold worldwide.