How Does Michigan's Iconic Bumpy Cake Get Its Signature Look

I first encountered a Bumpy Cake on a fall drive into central Michigan when we stopped into a shop that sold Sanders candy and baked goods. The Bumpy Cake looked like a fancy Hostess or Little Debbie cake, but the taste and texture fully distinguished it from its mass-manufactured peers. The Bumpy Cake was rich, and the combination of buttercream under the glossy fudge frosting was surprisingly tasty, not just a mouthful of sugar. 

With its signature ridged look, the Bumpy Cake is a Michigan delicacy. It gets its iconic finish from the piped rails of buttercream that are then covered completely by a layer of smooth fudge frosting. The sweet, white buttercream is thick, so it holds its shape when piped into rows (and a stint in the freezer helps too). The thin chocolate frosting is then poured on, so it covers every inch of the cake. After the cake sets in the freezer again, you cut down through the ridges, revealing the buttercream that makes up each long bump. 

The combination of vanilla buttercream and chocolate fudge frosting is the classic combination for Bumpy Cake, though the still-running Sanders company also sells vanilla and carrot cake versions. It is amazing that this legendary combination ultimately came from a veteran confectioner's creativity when the buttercream started to run low.

The Michigan Bumpy Cake was originally created by German-born Fred Sanders Schmidt. He came to Illinois with his family as a child but went back to Germany as a young man to learn the art of making sweets. The newly trained candy maker returned to the United States as a married man with his wife, Rosa, ready to open his own business. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 tore through his first shop, he and his family eventually settled in Detroit, Michigan, and they opened a new store there in 1875. 

The iconic Bumpy Cake was created in 1912 after Schmidt began experimenting with a devil's food cake (a favorite of his late father's). After a long day of prepping, he was about to run out of buttercream. He decided to innovate, piping the buttercream he had in lines on the sheet cake before applying the chocolate ganache layer. Customers loved the dessert, which was originally called the Sanders Devil's Food Buttercream Cake. However, the name Bumpy Cake is what stuck, because customers referred to it as such.