A pop out cake, popout cake, jump out cake, or surprise cake is a large object made to serve as a surprise for a celebratory occasion. Externally, such a construction appears to be an oversized cake, and sometimes actually is, at least in part. However, the construction is usually cardboard. The inside of the object has a space for someone, typically a woman, to crouch and hide until the moment of surprise, when she then stands up and comes out of the cake.
The ancient Roman people held feasts featuring meat of one animal stuffed inside another. [1] Eventually, Petronius attempted to make it look as if the animals stuffed inside appeared to be alive. [1] In Medieval Europe, the entremets, a between-courses dish, developed into a form of entertainment, which could include the presentation of a pie with live animals, such as doves and frogs, bursting out. [1] Such spectacles were known as early as the 15th century and continued into the 18th century, when it was memorialized in the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence," wherein live blackbirds are placed in a pie shell to be served for a king's feast. [1]
On 5 November 1626, the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham presented King Charles I of England and Queen Henrietta Maria with a pie from which sprang the dwarf Jeffrey Hudson, in a suit of armor. [A] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
From the 19th century onwards, the pop out cake became exclusive to attractive young women jumping out of cakes during decadent parties. [6] The concept became notorious after Stanford White put on a dinner on May 20, 1895, that included a scantily-clad girl, Susie Johnson, emerging from a pie made from galvanized iron, accompanied by a recitation of "Sing a Song of Sixpence". [B] A few months later, the "Pie Girl" having disappeared, The World ran a lurid expose of the episode that emphasized the prominence of the guests, who included Nikola Tesla and Charles Dana Gibson, [8] [9] and the scandalous nature of White's affairs. White himself was eventually murdered by Harry Thaw, the husband of White's former lover, Evelyn Nesbit. [1] The episode became "a sign for the decadence of art and high society." [10]
A 1927 show at the famous French cabaret Moulin Rouge had a grand opening consisting in dozens of female dancers popping out of huge multi-tiered artificial cakes covered in real frosting. However, when the girls descended to the stage, the soles of their high heels were covered with frosting, which proved slippery and caused them to fall on stage, ruining the show. [11] [12]
By the 1950s, women popping out of cakes was common during various social events such as office gatherings, conventions and bachelor parties. It eventually became common for showgirls to pop out of cakes for celebratory occasions. [1]
By the 1970s, the popularity of the pop-out cake declined due to changing social values. [13] However, it has remained part of pop culture, and the pop out cake has become something of a standard entertainment at bachelorette [14] and bachelor parties. [15] [ better source needed ]
Pop out cakes must be large enough to contain a woman in a squatting position, but not too high in order to allow her to gracefully get out of the cake. Sophisticated cakes can even include a little seat inside, so that the lady is more comfortable in case she has to remain in the cake for a long time before her popping out. [16]
There are many variants in shapes, sizes and heights. For a more impressive visual effect, some pop out cakes are so tall that the lady can't get out of the cake by herself; in these cases, only the upper part of her body is exhibited, and she is meant to remain inside of the cake for some time after her popping out, until the cake is wheeled offstage later during the party. [16] Some of the most refined pop out cakes are tall multi-tiered constructions in which the upper tiers are designed to fold down inside the bottom tier when the woman pops out, allowing her to exit the cake without difficulty. An example of such a cake can be found in the 1992 movie Under Siege .[ citation needed ] This kind of cakes with folding tiers, though commonly featured in films, TV shows, music videos and cabaret shows, are rarely used in real-life parties because the folding part tends to inconveniently drop and reveal the lady before the expected moment, in particular when the cake is tossed by the time it is wheeled onstage.
Until the beginning of the 1970s most pop out cakes were real. Things changed in 1975 when "the AP newspaper published an interview with a baker that worked making them for a small fee of $2,000. They were built around huge cylinders that could house an adult." [13] Nowadays, the construction is generally made of corrugated cardboard, [17] often covered with whipped cream or frosting to make them look real. This kind of pop out cakes present the advantages of being cheaper to build and easier to move, due to their lightness, but they are also much more fragile and should be handled with care. At a reception given for important members of the General Motors Company in the late 1980s, the lady who popped out of such a cake was wearing pointy stilettos, and when she stepped on the cake to get out of it, the heels of her shoes punctured the flimsy cardboard upper part and sank into the hollow structure, leading the lady to fall backwards and make the whole cake collapse. [18]
At the opposite, expensive pop out cakes can be entirely constituted of real edible cake arranged around the central hole. The cake served at the 2018 men-only Presidents Club Charitable Trust dinner was made and hand-decorated by pastry chef Nuno Mendes, [19] albeit the fact the woman who popped out of it was barefoot and turned out to have sweaty feet (due to the heat inside the cake) certainly prevented most people from eating it.
Different designs also exist concerning the top part: nowadays it is usually made of thin, almost flexible cardboard, which breaks into pieces when the woman jumps out; while, until the 1960s, the lid was customarily a rigid circular plate put on the top of the structure. As an example, during a high budget reception given in the early 1950s, the lady inside of the cake inadvertently threw up the lid vertically, and it fell back on her, smashing the intricate feathered headdress she was wearing. [20]
Often the person jumping out of the cake is an exotic dancer, showgirl, or model during a celebration. For example, Naomi Campbell popped out of a cake in 2004 for her then-boyfriend Usher's 26th birthday party at the Rainbow Room. [21] Comedian Bill Murray fell out of a cake in celebration of David Letterman's 2015 retirement from Late Show ; [22] Murray had been Letterman's first guest on Late Night with David Letterman when it debuted on NBC in 1982 and his first guest on Late Show with David Letterman when Letterman moved his show to CBS in 1993. [22]
American singer Katy Perry decided to reverse the concept, diving into a giant artificial cake after her last song at the end of a 2008 performance in Guadalajara, Mexico, during the 2008 Los Premios MTV Latin America awards. She subsequently stepped in cake thrown on the stage during her stunt, which covered her ballet slippers, leading her to fall several times and crawl off the stage on her hands and knees. [23]
The Fall-Winter 2012/2013 lingerie fashion show by Zahia Dehar, held in Paris on July 2, 2012, was divided into four themes, the second of which was entitled "Gâteaux et bonbons" ("Cakes and candy") and featured models popping out of giant artificial cupcakes before walking on the catwalk, [24] [25] although several of them reportedly had troubles opening the lid and remained trapped inside them until other models lifted the lids from the outside. [26]
During the Miss Universe 2017 beauty pageant, the National Costume of Miss Curaçao, Nashaira Balentien, evoked a pop out cake, with the bottom part looking like a multi-tiered cake covered with authentic sugar, and the upper part of her body popping out on the top. [27] During her performance onstage she had difficulty descending from the podium and stepped on her costume.
The pop out cake has been used as a metaphor. Sir Fred Hoyle was an advocate of the Steady State theory of the universe and considered theories that described a beginning as pseudoscience. [28] When he coined the term "Big Bang" on BBC Radio for the theory that he opposed, he stated that it was as undignified a way to describe the beginnings of the Universe as "a party girl jumping out of a cake". [29] [30]
Pop out cakes are a common trope, used especially in television and films. Notable examples include: In the movie Some Like It Hot (1959), starring Marilyn Monroe, in which a gangster pops out of a cake with a machine gun, killing almost everyone in the room; [31] and pop outs by Erika Eleniak in the movie Under Siege (1992);[ citation needed ] Mariah Carey in the music video for the song "Loverboy" (2001); [32] and The Joker in the September 11, 1992 "Joker's Favor" episode of Batman: The Animated Series . [33]
In Game of Thrones, a pop out cake has doves fly out after Joffrey slices the cake with his sword at his wedding. A few dead birds are seen laying in or near the cake, used to show how careless and cruel Joffrey is as well as referencing the medieval tradition and Song of Sixpence.
Occasionally a joke of some kind is added, such as an old lady or a hairy man popping out of the cake, in comedies like Family Guy or The Simpsons . A macabre joke, notably featured in the Addams Family movie, is that the woman gets inside the cake before it is baked.
An example of the pop out cake being more than an incidental element of a story can be found in Dalton City , the 49th album of the Western comics series Lucky Luke , published in 1969, in which there is the running gag of a dancing girl named Belle who is meant to pop out of a huge cake made by Averell Dalton while yelling "Youpee" during a wedding party, but she repeatedly fails to open the lid of the (abnormally hard) cake. At the very end of the album she eventually succeeds in popping out, only to see that the party is long over and everyone has left. [34]
Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate and which share features with desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit, nuts, fruit preserves, brown sugar, sweetened vegetables, or with thicker fillings based on eggs and dairy. Savoury pies may be filled with meat, eggs and cheese or a mixture of meat and vegetables.
A wedding cake is the traditional cake served at wedding receptions following dinner. In some parts of England, the wedding cake is served at a wedding breakfast; the 'wedding breakfast' does not mean the meal will be held in the morning, but at a time following the ceremony on the same day. In modern Western culture, the cake is usually on display and served to guests at the reception. Traditionally, wedding cakes were made to bring good luck to all guests and the couple. Nowadays, however, they are more of a centerpiece to the wedding and are not always even served to the guests. Some cakes are built with only a single edible tier for the bride and groom to share, but this is rare since the cost difference between fake and real tiers is minimal.
A birthday cake is a cake eaten as part of a birthday celebration. While there is no standard for birthday cakes, they are typically highly decorated layer cakes covered in frosting, often featuring birthday wishes and the celebrant's name. In many cultures, it is also customary to serve the birthday cake with small lit candles on top, especially in the case of a child's birthday. Variations include cupcakes, cake pops, pastries, and tarts.
A cupcake, fairy cake (BrE), or bun (IrE) is a small cake designed to serve one person, which may be baked in a small thin paper or aluminum cup. As with larger cakes, frosting and other cake decorations such as fruit and candy may be applied.
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"Sing a Song of Sixpence" is an English nursery rhyme, perhaps originating in the 18th century. It is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as number 13191. The sixpence in the rhyme is a British coin that was first minted in 1551.
The Prince and the Showgirl is a 1957 British romantic comedy film starring Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, who also served as director and producer. The screenplay written by Terence Rattigan was based on his 1953 stage play The Sleeping Prince. The Prince and the Showgirl was filmed at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire.
Carrot cake is cake that contains carrots mixed into the batter.
Lane cake, also known as prize cake or Alabama Lane cake, is a bourbon-laced baked cake traditional in the American South. It was invented or popularized by Emma Rylander Lane (1856–1904), a native and long-time resident of Americus, Georgia, who developed the recipe while living in Clayton, Alabama, in the 1890s. She published the original recipe in Some Good Things to Eat (1898). Her original recipe included 8 egg whites, 1 cup butter, 1 cup sweet milk, 2 cups sifted sugar, 3 ¼ cups sifted flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 tablespoon vanilla and called for the layers to be baked in pie tins lined with ungreased brown paper rather than in cake pans. The filling called for 8 egg yolks, 1 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup seeded raisins, 1 wine-glass of whiskey or brandy, and 1 teaspoon vanilla.
Cake decorating is the art of decorating a cake for special occasions such as birthdays, weddings, baby showers, national or religious holidays, or as a promotional item.
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Game pie is a form of meat pie featuring game. The dish dates from Roman times when the main ingredients were wild birds and animals such as partridge, pheasant, deer, and hare. The pies reached their most elaborate form in Victorian England, with complex recipes and specialized moulds and serving dishes. Modern versions are simpler but savoury combinations of rabbit, venison, pigeon, pheasant, and other commercially available game.
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A cake pop is a form of cake styled as a lollipop. Cake crumbs are mixed with icing or chocolate, and formed into small spheres or cubes in the same way as cake balls, before being given a coating of icing, chocolate or other decorations and attached to lollipop sticks. Cake pops can be a way of using up leftover cake or cake crumbs.
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