The History of Bundt Pans

Bundt pans were created in 1950 by H. David Dalquist, the owner of the Minnesota-based company, Nordic Ware. He cast the distinctive aluminum pan at the request of the Minneapolis-based Hadassah Society, a Jewish women’s group. The women wanted to recreate traditional kugelhopf, a dense, ring-shaped cake, and needed an appropriate pan to do so. (Notably, modern Bundt cakes have their roots in generations-old Eastern European cakes.) Dalquist dubbed his creation the “Bundt pan” after the German word bund, meaning “bond” or “alliance.” It’s not clear why he added the “t,” but it may have been in an effort to distinguish the brand from a similarly named pro-Nazi group. It may also have been for trademarking purposes. (In fact, if you’ve ever wondered why the word "Bundt" is always capitalized, it's because the term was copyrighted by Nordic Ware!). Demand for Dalquist’s Bundt pans grew slowly after the first order, but in 1966, demand suddenly skyrocketed. Why? After a Bundt cake won second place at the 17th annual Pillsbury Bake-Off (the baker named it the Tunnel of Fudge Cake), women all over the country became interested in baking their own Bundt cakes. Nordic Ware began producing 30,000 Bundt pans a day to keep up with the massive increase in demand! Today, over 70 million households own a Bundt pan and Bundt cakes remain a classic, beloved baked good in America.