Betty Crocker: Where Did the Three-Layer Cake Go?

 

My mom has been gone for 21 years now, and I don't have a lot of her belongings.  But one of the things I do have is her Betty Crocker's New Picture Cookbook from the fifties.  It's worn and falling apart in places, but all still there. 

Flipping through it, it's clear that it was written during a different time, a time when a woman's place was in the kitchen and nowhere else. 

Thank God, women can do and be anything they want these days.  Ironically, one of my daughters is toying with the idea of becoming a chef. 

Back to the cookbook: I love the retro drawings and the pictures of food you'll probably never see today. 
The degree of creativity that went into some of the creations is mind-boggling.  Today, most people, including myself, rarely take the time to make a three-layer cake.  It's a sheet cake or nothing. 

But it's fun to look back and dream of a time when life wasn't quite so hurried, and a three-layer cake was the only type.