The Pan Snoot

Back in the day, I was rabidly classist when it came to my batterie de cuisine. It took a Bundt pan, the workhorse of the hoi polloi, to bitch-slap the bigot out of me.

I WAS IN MY THIRTIES when it came to my attention that I was a notorious, card-carrying bigot. My prejudice was so deeply hidden that I considered myself a pretty accepting, politically correct kind of guy until those seven little words brayed from the phone: "Can you make me a Bundt cake?"

It was my neighbor Carlotta Florio. Carlotta worked for a major …