Baker's Cut-Up Cakes

If you're one of the younger generation, you might wonder "what are Cut-Up Cakes?"

These cakes were popular during the 50's, 60's and 70's. Baker's Angel Flake Coconut (General Foods) put out several different recipe booklets that featured different Cut-Up Cake designs. Publications International also published a hardcover book in the 1990's.

These cakes were popular because no special tools or pans were needed. Cakes were baked from your own recipe or from cake mixes, usually in either a 13x9 or two 8- or 9-inch layers. After the cake was cooled, you followed a pattern given in the recipe and cut the cake as directed with a knife, then put the pieces together to form the desired shape. The cake pieces were then covered with frosting making it appear as one solid cake. Most of the designs usually incorporated coconut into the decoration.

Some of the designs were quite imaginative: an airplane, turkey, Christmas tree, butterfly, doll, Santa, Easter Bunny, flower cart, teddy bear, umbrella, Valentine, Witch, cabin cruiser, sailboat, dolls, ballon, lion, turtle, swan, and a penguin are just a few.

These older booklets are still extremely popular. Grandmothers are baking them for their grandchildren, they're a fun cooking project to do with kids, and those practicing frugality and simpler lives find it easy to create a character cake without investing in special cake pans and cake decorating tools.

A list below of the Baker's Cut-Up Cake recipe booklets:

Cut-Up Cakes, 1956, 32 pages
Animal Cut-Up Cakes, 1959, 32 pages
Celebration Cakes: Cut-Ups!!, 1970
Baker's Cut-Up Cake Party Book, 1973, 127 pages
Baker's Easy Cut-Up Party Cakes (HC), 1993, 96 pages