run fast – stand still

I don’t know what triggered this, but on his way down the stairs Dave just sang the Gummi Bears television theme song.

Here I am minding my own business, working on my dissertation, contemplating the relatively recent resurgence of interest in 1950s culture, and *bam* a Williams Sonoma advertisement for Monkey Bread lands in my e-mailbox.

Somewhere back in the 1980s I learned how to make Monkey Bread in my middle school cooking class. This was back when public school kids were divided up into groups and taught how to sift, measure, stir, and bake in their own little kitchen. During these years, I learned that if I ever forget to put the egg in with the other chocolate cake ingredients in the bowl, mixing the egg in after the batter is poured in to the cake pan is a very bad idea. Think ribbon of egg in a baked chocolate cake.

Since those middle school years, I’ve discovered that not one single person has ever heard of Monkey Bread. But now, not only can I buy Monkey Bread Mix at Williams Sonoma, but I can also buy a baking pan specially made for Monkey Bread. See, in order for Monkey Bread to bake evenly, it has to have a hollow space in the middle, just like Angel Food Cake. In middle school, we learned to place a small oven safe bowl in the middle of a bigger baking pan to create that hollow space. Guess we were just too naive to understand that we needed to buy specially designed pans.

And how does this connect with the current nostalgia for the 1950s? According to Williams Sonoma, Monkey Bread was first introduced to America in the 1950s. So take that.