1970s foods: putting the duh in dessert

If these cards are any indication, dessert recipes were the most popular recipes to have. That's probably true; my mom's recipe collections are filled with desserts while the salad, soup, and vegetable sections are sometimes completely empty. While Mom was fond of whipping up dessert on a moment's notice, I've never been good at baking and steer clear from it when possible. I'm pretty good at eating dessert, though, and consider myself an excellent judge of tastiness by sight alone.

This loaf looks like a nice little cake, right?

Decent decorations on top, pretty layers, looks perfectly fine, right? Wrong. You're not looking at layers of cake, it's "unsliced sandwich bread" covered with butter. That's not frosting, that's cheese with salmon, chicken, and olives ground into it. The cake really is a lie. WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW, HEATHENS?



Do you know how long I stared at this picture...

...before I realized that those circles on the side of the cake formed a parrot and a pig? Weeks. I am completely serious, I had this in my pile of stuff to scan for weeks, glanced at it almost every day, and only yesterday did I see the piggy's face. That's when I started concentrating on the picture, yet that freaky parrot was still almost impossible to discern. Is that an olive for the eye? There is no recipe, again -- a lot of these recipe cards are nothing more than idea cards -- but there is a "fun" scrambled word game included.



HOLY SHIT THEY CUT A BIRD IN HALF AND STUFFED IT WITH

oh wait, that's just a pineapple.

This disgusting pile of once-edible fruits is called "Fonduloha", which was quite upsetting at first, since I thought the word meant "fondue" plus "aloha." However, it turns out just to be chicken and fruit salad. It contains bananas, so it is an abomination unto the heavens, but at least there is no cheese involved. The presentation could use a lot of work, though.




Another cake "recipe card" without a recipe:

WHAT.

The back of the card suggests, for a child's party: "Ask a friend to dress up as a gypsy and tell fortunes." Oh, dear.


This card...

...was just posted here because it's adorable as hell. TAKE ME TO YOUR GELATIN-BASED DESSERTS, BEEP BOP BOOP. Recipe for the "fat little space visitors" here.



And here are 2 more amazing desserts:

HOLY HELL.



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA hey, I wonder why there's a recipe for Sloppy Joes on the back of a dessert card AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAggggghhhhhhhhhhh

Tomorrow, the exciting finale to our food-based tour de force concludes with rare, compelling, real-world documentation of these recipes as seen in the wild. Don't miss Part IV: It's My Party and I'll Die If I Want To.