This is part six of the “Twelve Posts of Christmas,” a series exploring twelve traditions of the Christmas season.
The familiar, fluted shape of the cast-aluminum pan — with its trademark hole in the center — recalls to mind one word: Bundt. With 60 million Bundt pans scattered across American households, the indented dish resolutely signifies family gatherings, holiday desserts, and — for those of us from Real America — potluck-perfect Jell-O salad.
The storied pan, invented by an American, continues to be made in the U.S. The company which holds the Bundt trademark, Nordic Ware, offers a model of how the sheer quality of American-made goods can compete with cheaper goods offered elsewhere.
Nordic Ware was formed in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a few miles outside of my home town, in 1946. Minnesota is home to all Great American Baking Legends: Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, and Gold Medal Flour — brands now owned by General Mills — all originated in the North Star State. (Perhaps they can put the Pillsbury dough boy on the new Minnesota State flag, eh?)
Dave Dalquist, who trained as a chemical engineer at the University of Minnesota and served as a Navy radar technician in the Pacific during World War II, purchased Northland Aluminum Products with his wife Dorothy after he returned home from the war. The Dalquists then began manufacturing unrivaled aluminum bake ware under the Nordic Ware name.
The Bundt pan itself emerged in 1950, when Dave Dalquist was approached by two members of the Minneapolis chapter of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, who wanted to recreate the ring-shaped cakes of Old Europe their mothers had made with a pan made from modern materials. One of the women provided Dalquist with a model: A tall, ring-shaped ceramic dish that her German grandmother had used to make Gugelhupf, a traditional sweet bread made during weddings and holidays.
Dalquist, working from the motto “If you can sell it, you can usually make it,” produced the pan in cast aluminum for the Jewish women. He called this early model a “bund” pan, after the German word for alliance or bond. Soon after, the ending “t” was added to form the now-familiar trademark, “Bundt.”
For the next 15 years, Dalquist sold limited quantities of his new Bundt pan in local department stores. However, sales of the unmistakable dish took off when a Bundt cake placed second in the 17th annual Pillsbury Bake-Off of 1966. The gooey, chocolaty dessert — dubbed the Tunnel of Fudge Cake — inspired women around the country to make their own Bundt cakes. (The winning recipe, which contains only eight ingredients, can be viewed here — the recipe remains the most-requested in the history of the Pillsbury Bake-Off.)
The shape of the Bundt pan allows for such unique baking projects. An iconic scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) displays an, er, unintended purpose of the hole in the center of a Bundt cake. In the clip, the WASP mother of the groom, Harriet, presents the Greek mother of the bride, Maria, with a “Bundt” as the families are first introduced to each other. The Greek matron neither understands what this strange object is nor can she pronounce its name.
Maria: “What is it?”
Harriet: “It’s a Bundt.”
Maria: “A bun?”
Harriet: “A Bund-T”
Maria: “A bonn-k?”
Harriet: (now losing her cool) “BUND-T! BUUND-T!”
Maria: (after a tip from a family member) “Oh I know! It’s a cake!”
As she walks away, Maria whispers to a family member, “There’s a hole in this cake…” Later on, Maria fixes the hole in the Bundt cake by placing a flower pot in the center before presenting the dessert: “And now, the bun cake!”
Rather than provide a convenient divot for a pot of Geraniums, the hole in the center of the Bundt pan causes even heat distribution throughout the cake while it bakes. This allows for Bundt cakes to be contain approximately twice the volume of a standard-sized cake tin. And, of course, creates a distinctly fabulous final product — such as the Tunnel of Fudge Cake.
After the success of the ooey-gooey, chocolatey cake, Dalquist was inundated with orders. He put his factory into round-the-clock production and started making 30,000 Bundt pans a day. Throughout the 70s and the 80s, Bundt mania raged on. Annual sales soon climbed to 1 million pans, propelled by the introduction of novelty Bundts in the shape of a star, a Christmas tree, a cathedral, and other such entities.
For years, a grateful Dalquist gave the Minneapolis Hadassah chapter the leftover pans from his Bundt production. According to an obituary for Dalquist in the Los Angeles Times, the pans became a crucial source of funding for the group, which sold them and used the proceeds to pay for schools and hospitals in Israel.
“Who could have imagined that a simple aluminum cake pan, invented more than a half century ago, could have become a fundraising vehicle for an organization that today boasts more than 300,000 members across the country?” National Hadassah President June Walker said in a statement issued after Dalquist’s death.
“With that homey little baking pan, Hadassah women built the most advanced medical center in the Middle East, the Hadassah Medical Center at Ein Kerem,” she said. “We thank David Dalquist for his contribution.”
Dave Dalquist died in 2005 at the age of 86, overseeing the production of his popular pan to the end. To this day, his family still owns and operates Nordic Ware — manufacturing the world’s best Bundt pans, cookie sheets, microwave carousels, and more in the same location outside of Minneapolis.
According to a profile of the company by Twin Cities Business Magazine, the Dalquist family was told years ago that Nordic Ware needed to relocate its manufacturing to China in order to survive.
But “we were committed to making stuff here in America, here in St. Louis Park,” says David Dalquist, Nordic Ware’s CEO, and president and the son of founders Dave and Dorothy Dalquist. “We felt we had a real commitment to this family of employees that had given their lives to this company . . . You can’t just say, ‘I’m sorry, but your job went overseas because it’s cheaper.’ ”
Many of Nordic Ware’s employees have been with the company for 30 years or more, and most have been offered a chance to rise through the company’s ranks.
The Dalquists “gave me a huge opportunity to move up the ladder,” says Joyce Christensen, a 44-year company veteran who is now vice president of planning and distribution. “I’ve done many, many things in those 44 years, from driving a forklift to packer assembly to planning, all the way up. They just gave me that opportunity, with all the things that go with it.”
Bundt pans put America first. As you gear up for New Year’s gatherings, I recommend ringing in 2024 with a big, beautiful, Bundt to delight guests young and old.
This article was not in any way sponsored by Nordic Ware. The author, however, would welcome any sample products from the company to further her purely journalistic endeavors.