05/26/2026
Anna Depperschmidt’s Spectacular Cakes are a Result of Nearly 40 Years’ Effort
Oberlin Herald - May 31, 1956
When most housewives prepare an angel food cake, they separate the whites from the yolks from five to a dozen eggs. Not Mrs. Anna Depperschmidt of Dresden.
When Mrs. Depperschmidt makes an angel cake, she uses 140-150 egg whites – around 12 dozen – included in nearly 50 pounds of ingredients. Moreover, she doesn’t “whip up” a cake. It is more likely to take her weeks of planning prior to two weeks of patience, persistence, and professional skill in producing a cake that is sometimes an extravaganza, sometimes a significant momento, but always a brilliant bit of artistry.
Mrs. Depperschmidt is the lady whose appearance on the “Woman’s Voice” afternoon TV program over KHOL-TV in early May familiarized her and her work with many Northwest Kansans who had not already seen her amazing cakes at weddings, charities, or church affairs.
She has since been besieged with letters expressing wonder at her art, praise for her poise, and inquiry at the price of such powdered sugar sculptures.
The price angle interests many. Can she possibly receive a price commensurate with the skills and time required?
She doesn’t. The 56-year-old Anna Depperschmidt, a professional cake decorator for years, ordinarily receives $25, plus ingredients for her wedding cakes. Seldom, however, is her originality and sensitivity so unrecognized that she doesn’t receive a tip, and she admits, “I’m disappointed when I don’t.”
That doesn’t nearly cover Anna’s contribution. Each decoration is originally designed before she begins nearly two weeks before the due date to form the flowers, baskets, birds, arches, hearts, thrones, bells or lattice work that will adorn the finished product.
All require terrific patience. Each strip of lattice work, which she often uses to frame the bride and groom figures atop a wedding cake, or drop work must be held in place by hand until it holds its place and will support its own weight.
Perfectly shaped bells, complete with clapper, and replicas of roses in sugar indicate Mrs. Depperschmidt’s keen eye for detail. The coloring of the flowers is remarkably natural.
Her standards for such detail are so high that she worked for five years before she decided that a bit of icing on her angel cake “Sacred Heart of Jesus” looked like a tiny drop of blood and not “like a blob of colored frosting.”
When a cake is finished, Mrs. Depperschmidt may have used 19 pounds of powdered sugar, a three-pound box of cake flour, two cans of cream of tartar, a bottle of vanilla, 10 pounds of granulated sugar, 12 dozen eggs, and undetermined amounts of cake coloring and gilt.
A normal spectacular might be formed by five large cakes in the bottom tier, four or five smaller cakes on the next flight, topped by one of Mrs. Depperschmidt’s creations in icing.
The bottom tier is formed by cutting four cakes in half; the eight halves are then placed around a fifth cake placed in the center. The cakes must all have risen to exactly the same height to form the tier, and Mrs. Depperschmidt does not fail even though her cakes are so abnormally high – five and one-half inches – that she must slip an extension on the top of her cake pan.
To obtain such regular perfection, Anna insists upon careful measurements and a rigidly regulated oven. “No secrets,” she says, although admitting that she might alter the recipe somewhat because of the one inconsistent item – eggs.
After baking, she places two empty pop bottles in the cakes “to allow even cooling.”
Her actual forte, of course, is decoration. She started when she was 18, doing her brother’s wedding cake. Since then, she has worked steadily at her art, always keeping icing on hand “just to practice.”
Some creations - arches, thrones, steps, baskets -- are of fundamental geometric design. Some others -- bells, cylinders of solid granulated sugar -- have molds. But Mrs. Depperschmidt’s specialty is roses.
She discards the regular icing gun to make her roses. She uses a hand-formed wax paper funnel, and she squeezes the icing out through a special head set in the funnel to form the rose petal by petal. Each is technically perfect whether it is ¼ inch or two inches in diameter.
Recently Anna has perfected another technique, not involving the gun or the finger squeezing method. She drapes sheets of icing around her fingers to mold lilies and orchids.
The lilies and orchids served as special decorations around Anna’s most ambitious undertaking -- the four foot, 80-pound cake depicting the life of a priest for the recent elevation of Father Michael Mulvihill, priest of the Hoxie and Seguin parishes, to monsignor.
Elegantly decorated, the cake is of tremendous significance to Mrs. Depperschmidt. Speaking of Catholic tradition, she discusses the story of this cake with an alternate glow and hushed sensitivity. Undoubtedly, it came from the heart and soul of Anna Depperschmidt.
In particular does she speak of the “Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary” cakes, on which she worked intermittently for five years. Mrs. Depperschmidt had also made a similar cake when Father John Wolfe of the Leoville parish was given monsignor rank.
Where will her amazing abilities lead? She speaks hopefully of getting greater material rewards, and many people have given some hope. The TV appearance was a step in that direction, and John Muirhead of the First State Bank of Jennings has pressed her case in more populous, influential places. John Hummell, famed Denver caterer, has spoken admiringly of her work.
Unfortunately, her particular craft does not seem to lend itself to commercial production. Moreover, there does not appear to be anyone who shares her amazing talents.
She confesses that no one in her family had ever had artistic proclivities or great interest in cake baking. Her daughter, Bernita, 20, who occasionally helps her, has displayed some talent in music and art, however.
Whatever return she does get, there appears little doubt that Anna will continue her work. She has often given her talent to charity, particularly with a cake in the form a lamb asking for aid for G.B. Long, handicapped in a 1954 auto accident.
The Depperschmidts came to this county from Menlo about eight years ago. They farmed outside Dresden for four years, then moved into Dresden.
Mrs. Depperschmidt’s husband, Seraphine, has done much of the work decorating the two-story tinted rock house, and it indicates he too has much originality and good taste. However, Seraphine stays away from the cake baking, save for an occasional dishwashing chore.
Mr. Depperschmidt doesn’t eat much angel food although he’s seen many a cake come out of the family oven in his married life. He doesn’t go much either for foods long on egg yolks - what with 12 dozen left after each cake baking.
What happens to the yolks? Mrs. Depperschmidt passes them on to her Dresden neighbors. “They make such good noodles,” she says.
That should give Dresden the title for the most noodles consumed per capita in the U.S. And that’s no yolk.
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Anna Feldt Depperschmidt was born June 4, 1900 at Park, Kansas, one of nine children born to John and Anna Schulte Feldt. She died April 1, 1973, at Sheridan County Hospital.
She and Seraphine Depperschmidt were married June 16, 1925, in Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, Park. They moved northwest of Sequin, Kansas, in 1930, then to the farm east of Dresden in 1944. They moved into Dresden in 1959 where they lived the rest of their lives.
They had six children. Three infant sons, John, Melvin, and Elmer, preceded them in death.
Anna was a member of the American Legion Auxiliary, the Ave Marie Society, and the Dresden Community Guild. She baked and decorated cakes for weddings and all occasions for almost 40 years. She also started a thrift shop for the needy in the upstairs of their home.
Survivors are her husband; three children, Viola Koerperich, Wilsonville, Neb., Al J. Depperschmidt, Dresden, and Bernita Weber, Hoxie; one sister, Katie Truetken, Oakley, 15 grandchildren, and 9 great grandchildren.
Seraphine Depperschmidt was born December 12, 1895, at Monte Vista, Colorado, the son of John and Catherine (Schaffer) Depperschmidt. He died March 28, 1982, at the age of 86 at Cambridge, Nebraska, while visiting his daughter, Viola.
He served in World War I and belonged to the American Legion and was a Third and Fourth Degree member of the Knights of Columbus.
He was preceded in death by his parents, his stepmother Agnes Depperschmidt, his wife, three sons, four brothers, three sisters, a son-in-law Leo Koerperich, and two grandsons Mike Depperschmidt and Dale Edward Depperschmidt.
Survivors include daughters Viola Koerperich and Bernita Weber and her husband Kenneth; one son Al J. Depperschmidt and his wife Delores, 15 grandchildren, 17 great grandchildren, three brothers, Paul, August, and Henry; five sisters Rosa Zimmerman, Betty Kaiser, Cleo Fitzgerald, Bertha Owens and Catherine Goetz.
Anna and Seraphine are buried in Mt. Calvary Cemetery, Leoville.
