EU50 cakes

Birthday cake recipes from the 27 EU nations on a EU website?  My first reaction was that this must be a joke.

Like a Berliner-pfannkuchen - without the filling

Has EU that deals with serious issues such as security, trafficking, environment and economy on behalf of its member nations lost focus?  Or is this cake initiative political spin to gain a broader public support? 

High in calories, low in energy
Whatever the case, this 'official' birthday cake website is of such a quality that a school class doing intercultural studies could have made a better website on European birthday cakes.  Each country has two birthday cake recipes, Belguim has three.  Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Italy and Latvia have pictures of birthday cakes, but there are no recipes.  The captions are often in German even though the rest of the site is in English.  As a Dane I was curious to see what the second birthday cake recipe is, as everyone I know eats “Lagkage” at birthdays – a layer cake complete with cream and fruit.  The second Danish recipe was for a “Baiser apple cake”, which I’ve never heard of.  I’m not alone, because Google hasn’t heard of the combination "Baiser apple cake" and "Denmark" either.  In Cyprus they must have large birthday parties, because their “Daktila” recipe is for about 150 servings.  I will spare you more details.

German Federal Foreign Office initiative
This so-called multinational Birthday cake website is made by the Federal Foreign Office in cooperation with the embassies of the EU member nations in Berlin.  But obviously they don’t want to be contacted as the contact link doesn’t work, nor does the “imprint” link.  Although this is a German endeavour under the Presidency of the European Union, the website is also placed under the star-spangled umbrella of EU. 

Enough birthday cakes, fireworks, champagne and fluffy rhetoric of the Berlin Declaration (Who doesn’t support viewpoints such as: “We stand up for liberties and civil rights also in the struggle against those who oppose them” from the Berlin Declaration '07).  There is much more serious business to deal with in Europe than birthday cakes and the like!

Like a Berliner-pfannkuchen
The birthday cake website initiative – and perhaps also the Berlin Declaration – is too much like a Berliner-pfannkuchen with a bit of sugar, but no filling.  A birthday cake without a flavour.  Time to get back to work.

Related Information
German Presidency, Culinary celebration of Europe's 50th birthday
EU 50 year celebrations, EU50 cakes from A to Z