Dr Oetker Book of Cakes for Special Occasions (1998)

Another book from a charity shop in Austria. I love how incredibly cack-handed some of the cakes are. Most themed cake books are impossibly professional, these ones actually look like the result you’d realistically get.

I didn’t look at all the pages before I bought the book for €2. There was one page I definitely didn’t scan that was a “People of the World” cake that was just really ignorant and stereotypical (I think you can imagine what it looks like), and especially what the fuck considering the book is from the late 90s, not 1971. You never know where pictures you put on the internet will end up, so I don’t really want to put a racist cake out there. The other cakes are all fine. That page can sit in the book alone in shame.

For all those times you need a cake themed around Nine Men’s Morris. (Admittedly it’s more popular in Germany, and you sometimes see floor paint versions in playgrounds for kids to play with stones or leaves)

This is a turtle and ladybird, in case you couldn’t tell.

The volcano is a chocolate bundt cake with pink custard for the lava. The dinosaur is made of marzipan and smarties (or “chocolate lentils” as they’re known in German)

Felicitas is German for Felicity. It’s both extremely posh and a bit of an 80s name.

This is Germany, so these cookies are wholemeal for no real reason. This is the country that calls health food shops Reformhäuser. You will go there, you will buy some bran, you will suffer, and you will reform your soul.

Pastry hippo with cherry filling. Or a Nile Horse as it’s called in German.

I love the mains-powered loooong Game Boy

The horse/Nessie grown hair cake is my favourite. Despite the decoration, it’s not even a carrot cake, rather citrus.

Another board game cake- this time Ludo themed. Ludo is called “Mensch ärgere Dich nicht” – “Don’t get angry, man” in German.

The title of this cake is Ach-du-Schreck-Torte, which translates along the lines of Yikes! or Jesus! I guess they had given up by this point in the book. Those are rainbow drops scattered all over it.

Snake made out of Kalter Hund, a German no bake tiffin type cake. You break up the biscuits, and melt Palmin coconut baking fat (a specific German product very much like Australian Copha) and chocolate, mix with cream and set.

Maypole cake. The decorations on the top are made of woodruff flavoured jelly. I wish woodruff were a more common flavour in other countries- it’s a herb similar to mint but sweeter. The German names for jelly are great too- Götterspeise- “food of the gods”, Wackelpudding- “wobbly pudding”, Wackelpeter- “wobbly Peter”

I like the vampire bunny snuck into the corner.

“Easter chicks in pots”. The seemed to have a mandarin filling.

Gingerbread Christmas tree.

All decorated entirely with Dr Oetker products, they’ll have you know.

This ghost castle is made out of cheesecake (also made with Dr Oetker mix) believe it or not. You make a cheescake with a very thin layer of cheese, leave it to set overnight, and then cut it into blocks to build into a castle.

Why not try a real cheese cake for full cognitive dissonance?


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