How Thomas Edison invented cake

Sherman, set the Wayback machine for the year 1937 and the wonders of E-lectricity!

I love this booklet because there really aren't any recipes in it that can't be cooked non-electrically, and yet they go to great lengths to convince you that cooking with electricity is different and modern and not at all like cooking the old-fashioned way, which admittedly in 1937, before rural electrification, probably meant wood-burning ovens for a lot of Americans. Still, heat+food=cooking, so what's the big deal?

The booklet was co-sponsored by Thomas Edison's Electric Institute, which may explain its portentious tone, as it asks, "Can you resist the new technique?"

Well, this gal surely couldn't:


I love love love this picture because 1) she looks so happy; and 2) she's wearing such a fabulous dress, with neck darts no less! It's classic 1930's; and 3) how on Earth did she get that giant cake out of such a little tiny pot? and 4) she appears to have frosted the cake with fingerpaints.

It's just too charming, it almost makes up for some of the books more reprehensible recipes, like the sour milk steamed pudding, or the page on canning that actually instructs you to put filled, sealed canning jars into a hot oven for processing. Can you imaging the carnage? Can you imagine cleaning shattered glass and plum preserves out of your new electric oven? Oh, the humanity.