Betty Crocker rules in Minnesota

Her name has graced hundreds of familiar supermarket products and millions of cookbooks. Her likeness, captured over the course of seven instantly recognizable portraits, now hangs royal gallery-like in General Mills’ Golden Valley headquarters. At the peak of her fame, this radio and TV star was deluged with 4,000 letters a day and in 1945 was bested only by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in Fortune magazine’s most-popular-woman-in-the-nation survey. Not bad for a fictitious corporate spokeswoman. She is, of course, Betty Crocker, Minnesota’s most enduring ambassador to the world and a friendly — and trusted — face to America’s home cooks for 94 years. “She’s a legend,” said Twin Cities native Susan Marks, author of “Finding Betty Crocker” (2005). “Nothing compares to her. There are some similarities between Betty and Martha Stewart, but the big differences are that there’s probably not a jury that would convict Betty of anything.”

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