What the Schmutz: Sara Lee Classic Pound Cake with Kenzie (Ep 58)

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New guest alert! This week we welcome Kenzie to the pod—friend of Max, first-time podcaster, and possible blood relation to the Sara Lee family. (We're still looking into it.) Together we dug into a frozen institution that has been made virtually unchanged since 1951. This is Sara Lee's Classic Pound Cake.

Showing off the cake’s versatility, we test how far this dessert (does it have to be dessert?) can go. (Spoiler: it can go pretty far.) And showing off the cake's signature baking pan, just what is that schmutz on the outside? And will anyone taste it? (Spoiler: oh, we're not spoiling that.)

In the closer, it's Ice Cold Draft: Spring Break Edition. We each build our ideal frozen food travel squad. Darren heads to Cancun with buddies and a literal wingman. Max takes a ferry and disconnects from reality. And Kenzie has some strong opinions about who doesn't get an invite.

Plus: Smucker's owns Hostess and penetrates American homes. The correct pronunciation of Oregon. A brief personal history of polishing shoes and butlering. The 1747 recipe for pound cake calls for one hour of beating it. Darren has never seen a loaf of Sara Lee bread. And nobody—nobody—doesn't like frozen eats.

FROST BITES

Sara Lee was a real person. Charles Lubin named his company after his daughter Sara Lee Lubin in 1949. She later said, "It had to be perfect because he was naming it after me." She was eight years old at the time.

This pound cake is old, yo. The first published pound cake recipe appears in Hannah Glasse's 1747 The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. The original formula—one pound each of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs—was designed to be easy to remember even for people who couldn't read.

Sara Lee invented the foil baking pan. In 1953, the company pioneered a process to bake, freeze, and ship products all in the same aluminum pan—a genuine revolution in frozen food distribution. The pan you pull from the freezer today is the same pan the cake was baked in. That little bit of "schmutz" on the outside? Yeah, it's almost certainly overflow from the filling process.

The slogan you think you know is wrong. The famous Sara Lee tagline is "Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee." It's often misremembered as "Nobody does it like Sara Lee." The double negative was not unintentional. It was retired around 2006 along with most rules of grammar.

YOUR COLD CUTS

We want to hear from you! What's your go-to pound cake preparation? Powdered sugar? Fruit compote? Something that would make Darren nod approvingly or Kenzie deeply uncomfortable?

And who would you take—or leave behind—on a frozen food spring break? Hit up the Let's Chill page and let us know!

ENJOYING THE POD?

BUY US A COLD ONE

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