This ad from the Feb. 1952 issue of Better Living promotes the idea of flavoring and coloring your cake with fruit flavored gelatin, "Your cake will have a wonderful, tempting fruit flavor."
When this ad came out there were only three flavors of Betty Crocker Cake Mixes. The colorvision cake called for the Party Cake mix that made a yellow cake. To make it you added three tablespoons of your favorite fruit flavored gelatin as you started to mix the cake.
To make the Icing : Mix, in top of double boiler all the remaining fruit gelatin in package, 1/4 cup egg whites, 1 cup sugar,1/8 tsp. cream of tartar, 1/4 cup water. Place over boiling water and beat with electric mixer on high speed, or rotary beater, until icing holds stiff peaks. remove from over boiling water and beat about 1 min. longer.
I don't recall seeing this idea in later Betty Crocker booklets so I wonder if it really turned out very well. It seems like it would work. Remember the gelatin poke cakes? You don't hear about them much any more either. Maybe this idea just came and went.
5 comments:
I remember the poke cake very well. It would be fun to experiment today with all the new flavors of Jello to see what kinds of rainbow cakes could be created. I love the name, "Colorvision Cake" -- its so 1950's black and white visionary!
Hi Rochelle,
My sister who is the baker in the family was so artistic when it came to baking these cakes when she was a bit of a tyke. I will just have to show her your post. I'm sure it will bring back "tacky" memories.
I sent a poke cake to the office a couple of Christmases ago--people still like them!
Love it! I'm going to try a cake with orange jell-o
My old co-worker brought poke cakes to potlucks all the time. They were always popular.
Colorvision cake has remained a staple in my family all of these years. It probably didn't do well with the American public for a few reasons. The icing is a bit more work than most people like to deal with (canned icing is so much easier). For some reason, it seems that people who don't like marshmallows, don't like colorvision cake. It is a very sweet cake and the icing tends to be somewhere between a meringue and marshmallow creme texture. My personal suggestion for flavoring is wild strawberry - it cuts the sweetness just a bit. I've only tried strawberry flavors, cherry, orange, and grape. Maybe lime or lemon would cut the sweetness too.
All in all, it's not a completely forgotten cake. I just turned 36 yesterday and the ragged remnants of my colorvision birthday cake sit in my kitchen right now. And I highly recommend trying the recipe out at least once!
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