If you were born in Australia in the ‘80s or ‘90s, there’s a good chance you celebrated your birthdays with a carefully-constructed train, piano, duck, cricket pitch or pool from the iconic Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book.
Even New Zealand’s beloved Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is a fan of the book, having taken to social media to boast about her creations for baby Neve on multiple occasions.
If you’re a ‘00s baby and missed out on the fun, not all hope is lost. According to News.com.au, there’s a new limited edition copy of the classic hitting shelves later this month. Apparently, the book will feature more than 50 recipes for animal, creature, numbers and fantasy-themed cakes.
In honour of its return to book shelves, here’s a ranking of the best Australian Women’s Weekly Birthday Cakes, from impressive to near-impossible to replicate:
1. Birthday Cake Numbers
If you had a sharp knife and a couple of cake tins, turning your age into a sugar-coated spongey treat was easy as pie. For those with little more talent time on their hands, the ‘jigsaw’ number two was a manageable challenge. But let’s be real – cake numbers aren’t exactly god tier when it comes to Women’s Weekly birthday cakes.
2. Chip Duck
I’m calling it: the beloved Chip-billed Duck cake is 1980’s answer to Julie Goodwin’s Masterchef-winning croquembouche. With popcorn hair, a crinkle-cut chip mouth and utterly terrifying liquorice eyes – the chip duck cake is burned into our childhood memories. However, there’s a fair amount of skill involved here and novice bakers run the risk of serving up a popcorn and chip-covered ball of icing if they’re not careful.
3. Barbie Dress
The only thing better than eating a Barbie dress cake at eight years old is the possibility of keeping the Barbie doll afterwards. But locating (and wiping down) an old Barbie doll is just one element of this tricky cake recipe. You also need to source a specific bowl-shaped cake tin to achieve the skirt-shaped base. This is not for those who are in a rush or can’t really be bothered to go the extra mile.
4. Swimming Pool
If your family was able to make your swimming pool cake look anything like the one in the Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake book, they deserve an award, quite frankly. Not only did this Masterchef Finale-grade dessert require the combination of jelly and cake, but look at the LADDER. Musk sticks and liquorice handrails? I’m done.
If you’ve been baking banana bread in isolation, you need to listen this:
If you’re looking to revisit these classics, you don’t need to listen to any of our opinions – but you should take the advice of the book’s author Pamela Clark.
In a 2018 interview with ABC, Clark advised at-home bakers to avoid the dump truck cake at all costs. “The weight of the top would just break the rest of the cake. Don’t go there, glue the pages together, forget it.”
There you have it – straight from the cake connoisseur’s mouth.
Always be in the loop with our snackable podcast breaking the biggest story of the day. Subscribe to It’s Been A Big Day For… on your favourite podcast app.