Pop out cake

A pop out cake, popout cake, jump out cake, or surprise cake is a large object made to serve as a surprise for a celebratory occasion. Externally, such a construction appears to be an oversized cake, and sometimes actually is, at least in part. However, the construction is usually cardboard. The inside of the object has a space for a someone, traditionally a young, attractive woman, to crouch and hide until the moment of surprise, when she then stands up and comes out of the cake.

The ancient Romans held feasts featuring meat of one animal stuffed inside another. Eventually, Petronius attempted to make it look as if the animals stuffed inside appeared to be alive. In Medieval Europe, the entremet, a between-courses dish, developed into a form of entertainment, which could include the presentation of a pie with live animals, such as doves and frogs, bursting out. Such spectacles were known as early as the 1400s and continued into the 18th century, when it was memorialized in the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence," wherein live blackbirds are placed in a pie shell to be served for a king's feast.

In 1626, the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham presented King Charles I of England and Queen Henrietta Maria with a pie from which sprang the dwarf Jeffrey Hudson, in a suit of armor. The date of the pie banquet was 5 November 1626.

The concept became notorious after Stanford White put on a dinner on May 20, 1895 that included a scantily-clad girl, Susie Johnson, emerging from a pie made from galvanized iron, accompanied by a recitation of "Sing a Song of Sixpence". A few months later, the "Pie Girl" having disappeared, The World ran a lurid expose of the episode that emphasized the prominence of the guests, who included Nikola Tesla and Charles Dana Gibson, and the scandalous nature of White's affairs. White himself was eventually murdered by Harry Thaw, the husband of White's former lover, Evelyn Nesbit. The episode became "a sign for the decadence of art and high society."

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