In 1973, when Nora Ephron went to California to report on the Pillsbury Bake Off competition for Esquire, 97 of the 100 contestants were women (the remaining three were a male graduate student and two twelve-year-old boys). While she found some division between the contestants about the use of new “hip” ingredients like sour cream and whole wheat flour – granola macaroon, anyone? – the prevailing attitude to life and cake at the competition was summed up by Suzie Sisson, a 25-year-old contestant from Illinois:
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