he news of bundt cake pan creator H. David Dalquist's death Jan. 2 at age 86 might have set off a slight wave of sentimental baking, but the folks at his Nordic Ware factory already knew that a whole lot of bundt pan baking was going on.

Northland Aluminum Products of Minneapolis, which makes Nordic Ware, sells more than 1 million bundt pans each year and is the top-selling cake pan in the world.

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When Dalquist was asked to produce his take on the German kugelhopf pan in 1949, it was just another addition to his family's line of ethnic bakeware, according to Dianne Hennessy King of Alexandria, Va., who was editor of Pillsbury Publications in the early 1970s. Pillsbury and Dalquist's company were both based in Minneapolis, and King remembers when a single recipe — the Pillsbury Bake-Off second-place Tunnel of Fudge Cake — generated a name recognition for Nordic Ware that has never diminished. "The fluted look of the bundt pan seemed to catch the consumer's fancy," she says.

The fact that anyone can produce a lovely, non-lopsided, sculpted cake that doesn't beg to be frosted is perhaps the real reason for the bundt pan's perennial popularity, according to company spokeswoman Claudia Ross.

As a result, bundt cakes grace many a bake sale table and dinner host's doorstep. An apple cinnamon bundt was among the first recipes featured in the new PBS television cooking series "Everyday Food."

Who can forget the bewilderment of Lainie Kazan's Greek mother character in the 2002 film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" as she's handed "a cake with a hole in it" from her middle-American in-laws to-be? (She plopped in a potted flower, but people have long been moved to fill up the middle with fruit and more.)

Those who have made a name for themselves in the baking business confirm that bundt cakes' appeal is understandably steady.

"Their big rose pan is kind of like my signature now," says kitchen scientist and "Cake Bible" authority Rose Levy Beranbaum, who often uses that model to bake her kugelhopf bread. That pan, introduced in Nordic Ware's line of non-geometric floral designs in 2003, produces an end result that features concentric petal layers on top.

Beranbaum got a special tour of the Nordic Ware plant last year — her first time there. "The nice thing about Nordic Ware is that they never have decreased the quality of their bundt pans," she says, referring to the company's consistent use of cast aluminum.

Bundts are big even in Japan: Beranbaum recently hosted a group of "pretty serious pastry people" who came to the United States for a week of sessions with culinary professionals. The group's tour leader was Makiko Fujino, dubbed "the Martha Stewart of Japan" and a student of Beranbaum's from 25 years ago. Through translators and enthusiastic gestures, each Japanese student made it clear to Beranbaum that they wanted her to use the rose pan during their class. By week's end, they each had a pan of their own to take home.

A 1997 Washington Post article reported that Dalquist, the industrial engineer, was asked by members of a Minneapolis Hadassah chapter in 1949 to cast a better version of the ladies' ceramic baking molds used to bake bundkuchens, or "gathering" cakes. Such traditional European baking pans were round and scrolled, with a tube running through the center in order to bake big, dense cakes.

Dalquist developed an eight-lobed, fluted, heavy-metal pan the next year that fit the bill, which he trademarked as a "Bundt." The resulting 12-cup classic remains Nordic Ware's best seller today. Shapes, sizes and designs range from a connected loop of what appears to be layered sand castles to Beranbaum's favorite rose pans (big and small), from a broad sunflower to a small community of Gothic cathedral arches, and from cupcake-size hearts to 2004's new round of pointed holiday trees. The latter looks particularly nice with a light dusting of confectioners' sugar.

Several of the more recent bundt pan models have originated from months of test designs by the company's own sculptors and from its partnership with Williams-Sonoma, which in turn has the exclusive rights to sell particular designs for a certain period of time before the rights are released to Nordic Ware and other kitchenware purveyors.

Nordic Ware's bundt pans all have nonstick interiors these days, a feat the company pioneered in cookware, according to King. Small booklets produced by the company (price: 25 cents) in the late 1960s offered recipes for Harvey Wallbanger's Cake, basic gelatin molds and proudly announced their pans' Teflon II interiors. That innovation must have made the prospect of cake extraction all the easier.

The bundt pan's ability to help produce a moist and uniformly browned cake has induced hundreds and hundreds of recipe variations. The one that really secured the bundt's place in the baking pantheon — the 1966 Pillsbury Bake-Off Tunnel of Fudge — cannot be produced to the letter, as the Pillsbury Double Dutch Fudge Buttercream Frosting Mix it calls for is no longer being made.

But oh, the places people have gone instead: In addition to modern takes on the Tunnel, the White Pepper and Ginger Lemon Cake, Rum Cake, Coffee Kuchen, Caramel Banana Cake. . . . Recipes for jellied salads and breads made in bundt molds are endless. Nordic Ware (www.nordicware.com) also sells clear acrylic bundt cake keepers and various cake mixes.

"I love my bundt pans," says Brenda Rhodes Miller, a Washington author who has just published her second cookbook, "The Church Ladies' Celestial Suppers & Sensible Advice" (HP Books, $29.95). She still has her orange and yellow Classic models that were made by Nordic Ware in the late '60s and early '70s.

"About 15 years ago, they inspired me to dress up my corn bread and sausage dressing for Thanksgiving," she says, and she's been making the improved version ever since. Miller buttered a pan and stuffed the dressing in it. She remembers that it took a long time to bake: "When it came out in this beautiful bundt shape, I put a bowl of cranberry jelly in the middle where the hole is. It was an unexpected treasure in my cabinet."