In Canada the cake was a well-known dessert in the restaurants and bakeries of the Eaton's department store chain in the 1940s and 1950s. Promoted as an exclusive Eaton's recipe, with employees who knew the recipe sworn to silence, many mistakenly believed the cake to be the invention of the department store's matriarch.
A resurgence in the popularity of this cake is partly attributed to the 1989 film "Steel Magnolias" in which the groom's cake (a southern tradition) is a red velvet cake made in the shape of an armadillo.
