Gypsy Creams
Looks familiar?
Woman's Own / 13th June 1969
Hmm…don’t these look like the Whoopie Pies which are currently sweeping the nation’s supermarkets? Maybe someone else out there has a similar magazine collection to me!
3 Comments
Tanya Jones on 7 March 2011 @ 9pm
Yes, I’m not totally sure which demographic is being targeted here: presumably young housewives, because I’m sure older women had more than one cake recipe under their belts. Was this a slippery slope to learned dependence on shop-bought cakes? I suppose there were always people who couldn’t bake to save their lives!
Philip on 21 March 2011 @ 5pm
There is a story here.
“Instant” cake mix was introduced into the US in the 1950s. However, it wasn’t eagerly received by housewives who understood, of course, that “good home baking is part of good home making”. So the ingredients were altered, and an egg henceforth had to be added to the mix. This “taking out the egg so the housewife can add it back in” was wholly unnecessary, but appeared to satisfy the focus groups. So the sector standard became cake mix to which you “just add an egg” (plus all that love, care and attention, of course).
That Mary Baker was quite a psychologist.
David L on 7 March 2011 @ 1pm
“You have to add ingredients of your own!”
I like the independence that’s being encouraged here, but I also wonder what the threshold might be that turns “some ingredients that could go towards making some cakes” into “cake ingredients that you need a bit of imagination to complete”. There must be a percentage rule written in a book somewhere.