Nutella was invented during WWII when an Italian pastry maker mixed hazelnuts into chocolate to extend his chocolate ration.
100 Mind-Blowing Pastry Facts
The O&H Danish Bakery in Racine, Wisconsin, makes 7,000 Kringles a day during the holiday season and has made landfall in all seven continents. A Kringle is Wisconsin’s State Pastry, originally hails from Northern Europe and is a sweet variation on a pretzel.
In 1871, Potter Palmer, a Chicago businessman, built Palmer House, a Hilton Hotel, for a wedding gift for his wife, Bertha, who in 1893 asked the hotel’s pastry chef to make a chocolate cake-like treat that would be easy to transport for the World’s Columbian Exposition. The result of this request was the Palmer House Brownie, made of thick chocolate and topped with a walnut and apricot glaze and later published in a Sears Roebuck Catalog in 1898.