Bundt Pans

Losing Pieces of our Future

For Christmas this year one of the things I got my wife was a new Bundt pan.  It was a shiny silver color, with decorative impressions on the bottom.  When you turn it over and take the cake out, it looks like a Christmas wreath.

Now that may not sound like much of a gift to some, but every year on Christmas Eve, my wife uses a Bundt pan to make a wonderful Christmas coffee cake that we have on Christmas morning.  We drink hot black coffee and eat slices of the moist cinnamon coffee cake while we open our presents.  It is a simple tradition, but one that has brought our family much joy over the years. It is one of my favorite things about Christmas.  By the way, the new pan made a beautiful cake this year.

I bring this up because yesterday while reading the Los Angeles Times I noticed a wonderfully written obituary by Elaine Woo in recognition of H. David Dalquist, a clever fellow who was the inventor of the Bundt pan. 

According to the Times, Dalquist, a metallurgy expert, first developed the pan in 1950 at the request of the members of a Jewish women’s group who wanted to make a cake similar to the dense moist cakes their mothers had made in Europe. The rest as they say, is history.

It seems such a simple thing, a cake pan.  But over the years, the Bundt pan became one of the world’s most popular cake pans and a driving force in Dalquist’s company, Nordic Ware. The company has sold more than 45 million Bundt pans since Dalquist developed the first one.  In the process, Dalquist created thousands of jobs and dozens of new products that have made baking more enjoyable and brought pleasure to families like mine. 

According to the Times though, Dalquist and his Bundt pan had even greater impact. Apparently in gratitude to the small group of Jewish women who first asked him to develop the pan, Dalquist donated his production seconds to the Minneapolis Chapter of Hadassah. The group sold them and used the funds to pay for schools and hospitals in Israel.  In the obituary, Elaine Woo quotes National Hadassah president June Walker as saying, “ 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 now boasts more than 300,000 members across the country.  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.”

While pondering the simple, but wonderful contribution made by H. David Dalquist, I was drawn to another article about a clever young man by the name of Jonathan Castro, who dreamed of being an engineer.  As a high school student, he built an electric car from scratch.  He had also built an electric guitar and was planning to rebuild an old Ford Thunderbird he had bought.  He liked to ride mountain bikes and go to the beach. He wanted to go to college.  The article quotes his mother as saying “ He wanted to learn about a lot of different things in life. He liked to test his limits.” He sounds like a fine fellow, with a world of potential.

But Jonathan Castro won’t be building anything else. The article I was reading about him was also an obituary. Just 21, he was one of the brave soldiers fighting in Iraq who was killed in last week’s mess hall bombing that also killed 17 other Americans.

What simple contribution might Castro have made? What difference might he have made to our future?  Maybe he would have invented the next “Bundt pan.” Maybe he might have been a great inventor, a creator of jobs, a titan of industry.  Or maybe he would just have been a good man among his common men.  We will never know. 

But what we should know and understand is that the death of Jonathan Castro, and the deaths of the more than 1300 soldiers killed to date in the war in Iraq, is slowly robbing us of pieces of our country’s future.   What won’t get invented?  What companies won’t be created? What teacher won’t be there to help an aspiring student?  What father won’t be there to hold a child’s hand? 

That’s the cost of this war, and all of us should be asking if it’s worth it. 

Comments

[Christmas Text Messages]

I recently bought 2 bundt pans from the trift store. These are the best ones to have heavy and thick. They are kinda old and have some browish gunk baked on. I tried the detergent and hot water soak but only a little came off. Does anyone know what I can do?
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I recently bought 2 bundt pans from trift store. These are the best ones to have heavy and thick. They are kinda old and have some browish gunk baked on.I tried the detergent and ho water soak but only a little came off. Does anyone know what I can do

http://www.bundtcakepans.net/specialtycakepanssavarianmolds-c-9_13.html