Here I’ll mention how this cake is connected to the first cooking show Ever!
Mrs. Helen E. Farquhar wrote Iglehearts’ Cake Secrets cooking booklet. There’s at least a 1922 and 1924 edition. This same cake, pictured here, is in Anna J Peterson’s Simplified Cooking book from 1924. Why did they share the same photo in very different cookbooks? Well, they both worked for the People’s Gas Co. in Chicago giving cooking demonstrations.
Anna Peterson was the host of the first commercial cooking show on the radio in the world (even Australia?) beginning December 1922. She’d announce weekly free in-person cooking lectures and 1500 people would show up — they couldn’t fit them in the 500 in-house auditorium so they moved the location. Basically, Anna Peterson demonstrated cooking and baking, including cakes, and Helen Farquhar had a separate lecture demonstrating the frosting and decorating of cakes.
Before the internet, before TV, before movies, before radio, there was only the printed page. Having the first commercial cooking show on the radio was a new phenomenon, and the people responded en masse.
