HADASSAH AND THE BUNDT PAN: PARTNERS IN HISTORY

The Onion could have authored this, but they didn't. Write your own joke--this one's too easy.

HADASSAH MOURNS PASSING OF BUNDT PAN INVENTOR;

H. David Dalquist created baking pan as Hadassah fundraiser

(New York - January 5, 2005) - With the holiday season barely over and all those calories from all those baked goods already firmly attached to America’s hips, the passing, announced today, of the inventor of the Bundt pan, H. David Dalquist, will give pause to bakers and dieters everywhere. But how many know that the Bundt pan was invented in response to a request by the members of the Minneapolis Chapter of Hadassah?

In 1950, when home baked goods were still a staple of every American household, and baking lessons a featured highlight of Hadassah meetings, the Minneapolis chapter tried to recreate the heavy cakes that their mothers used to make in their native Europe. Unable to find the right pan, one member took a relic from her mother’s German kitchen to H. David Dalquist, chairman, owner and founder of Northland Aluminum, and asked him to recreate the pan in modern material.

The result was a success, and for years Dalquist gave the Hadassah chapter his seconds, which they turned around and sold to raise funds for Hadassah’s projects in Israel, which today include two major hospitals, a college, a career counseling center, and numerous youth programs.

“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?” said June Walker, National President of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. “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. We thank David Dalquist for his contribution!”

In the 1960s, the Bundt pan really became a hit when a Texas woman used it to place second in the Pillsbury bake-off. Today, thanks to Hadassah, there is probably not a home in America without a Bundt pan.