Snack Cake Super Stardom!

James Dewar started working at Illinois’ Continental Baking Company in the 1920s as a delivery boy, hawking pastries from a horse-drawn cart. By 1930, he had risen to plant manager, and on April 6 of that year, he created the most famous snack cake the world has ever known, the Twinkie. Before the cakes were called Twinkies, they were Little Shortcake Fingers, pre-packaged strawberry-filled shortcakes that were available only during the short strawberry-harvest season. The idle factory equipment drove Dewar to invent a new, still nameless, yellow sponge cake filled with banana crème. While on his way to a marketing meeting, Dewar passed a billboard advertising Twinkle Toe Shoes. He had found the Twinkies name, and the rest is snack cake history.