Seventy years ago, when Arlene McCardle was a 19-year-old on the cusp of 20, she entered what later would be known as the Pillsbury Bake-Off, making the contest deadline just in time. She became Wisconsin's sole junior finalist on the strength of her recipe. McCardle baked her Venetian Cocoanut Cake at the competition in December 1952 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York â a four-layer sponge cake with alternating layers of pudding-like vanilla and chocolate fillings, topped with toasted coconut. (Cocoanut was an old variation on coconut still in use into the midcentury.) Pillsbury published the junior winner's recipe...