According to this classic cookbook, legend has it that a Maine housewife was baking a chocolate cake and … The Betty Crocker School of the Air was the countries first radio cooking show. The name Betty Crocker was a fictitious name created to personalize responses to consumer inquires about baking that were flooding the flour-milling company, The Washburn Crosby Company, back in 1921. All that changed in 1947, when the first Betty Crocker cake mixes hit America's shelves. Probably your mother's cookbook! A note in Betty Crocker’s Baking Classics,circa 1979, claims that Bangor Brownies (as in Bangor, Maine) are probably the original chocolate brownies. Turns out, Betty Crocker history is the history of the American woman. "Betty Crocker had always stood for quality in the minds of consumers, but during the first half of the twentieth century, convenience foods were not associated with good eating. The company began to diversify its activities in the early 1960s. The 1996 face of Betty Crocker. 1950, 60s, 70s, 80s. AP/General Mills In 1936, General Mills commissioned Betty Crocker's first portrait to be drawn by the prominent artist Neysa McMein, who was known for her portraits of women in war and the painting "All American Girls." During the Great Depression she advised cash strapped homemakers how to cook tasty meals on a tightened budget. Betty Crocker's Cook Books: Historic United States cookbooks and cooking ephemera. Betty Crocker didn't just offer American women recipes and boxed cake mixes—she was conceived as … Some elements are obvious: It begins with water, for instance, and must include moments like the creation of modern cornstarch and Betty Crocker cake mix. Building a timeline of food history is an understandably complex undertaking. and the state of Maine. But parsing out the origins of the lollipop or identifying the world’s most definitive cookbook requires additional research prowess. It sold off a number of unprofitable flour mills and moved into such areas as snack foods, children’s toys and games, and fashion. On June 13, 1933, the company had informed the U.S. Patent Office that it had made a major breakthrough, arguably the biggest, in cake-mix history—a cake … The name Betty Crocker became a leading brand of cake mixes and other goods used in home baking.