Presidential Cookie Bake-Off: Prophetic Tradition? Sexist, High-Calorie Charade? Or Both?

Family Circle Magazine’s Presidential Cookie Bake-Off, which traditionally pits the cookie recipe of the current First Lady against that of the First Lady Hopeful, first occurred in 1992 and has now spanned six elections. What began as PR damage control for Hillary Clinton before the 1992 election (after she was accused of being out of touch with stay-at-home, cookie-baking women), has, oddly, become a rather prophetic indicator of the likely outcome of presidential elections. With the exception of Cindy McCain, every winner of the bake-off has gone on to the White House.

Not only does the outcome of the contest itself seem to (sometimes) predict that of the election, but one may even be able to predict the outcome of the bake-off itself based on one little factor: whether either recipe contains oats.