a cake decorator I'm not + a somewhat fancy cake

Home Baked - Spring

I am not much of a fancy cake decorator. I lack both the artistic vision and the patience for anything other than the simplest of decorations. I’m quite awestruck by some cakes that I see - elaborate icing piped through strangely shaped nozzles to create everything from pleated swirls to delicate tiny dots. Like many Australian parents, my fancy cake decorating has, for the most part, been restricted to creations from the Australian Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book.

My copy of the AWW Birthday Cake Book. The train on the front cover was considered by many to be the hardest creation in the book.

Originally published in 1980, the book was part of a series of magazine cookbooks published by the Australian Women’s Weekly. In the first six months of its release, the book was reprinted four times with initial sales of 100,000, not bad going in a country that had a population at the time of 14 and a bit million. The book was out of print for some years but was reprinted in 2011, minus a few of the cartoon cakes, for which the licenses were no longer available, and introduced a whole new audience to the pressure of creating a cake that resembled the picture.

The book was written by Pamela Clark, who worked in the test kitchen at the Australian Women’s Weekly. Asked to make a dinosaur cake by a neighbour, she developed the recipe which was later printed in a copy of the Women’s Weekly magazine. From there, work continued on compiling a children’s birthday cake cookbook. The first edition, with 107 cakes made largely from packet butter cake mix, Vienna cream icing and lollies, was not an immediate hit but gradually found its way into the lives of many Australians. With over one million copies sold, it is considered today to be something of a cultural icon. Clark said that children would take the book to bed with them as bedtime reading, pouring over the options for their next birthday cake. Australian demographer Bernard Salt has suggested that the book modernised and ‘grandified’ children’s birthday party culture in Australia. It has been the feature of art exhibitions, stand-up comedy routines and fundraisers as well as more than the occasional list trying to rank the individual cakes’ popularity.

Despite the cakes in the book being seriously dated, it remains popular, no doubt in part due to nostalgia. Parents who remember their own birthday cakes from the book and are keen to reproduce them for their children. Interestingly, sales of the book increased by 30% during the pandemic, no doubt due to lockdown and having more time to finesse these birthday creations.

Surprisingly, for a cookbook there are scant directions for any cooking. If you want to make your own butter cake from scratch, there is a recipe at the front of the book, but it’s easier to run with the suggestion to use a packet mix. As I read somewhere it is essentially a craft book where the materials happen to be edible. There are instructions for colouring coconut, creating building features from licorice allsorts and making eyelashes from a strand of licorice. And if you ever wanted to master marshmallow flowers, this is the book you need.

Perhaps one of the appealing things about the cakes in this book is their lack of perfection. There are no precise lines, or smooth as silk icing, and most mistakes can be covered with another lolly. It makes the creations look achievable. For many people, the Choo-Choo Train, featured on the front cover of the book, was considered to be the ultimate test, a feat of carved Swiss rolls and popcorn threaded onto pipe cleaners. However, Clark considers the Tip Truck to be more challenging, balancing the tray filled with sweets is not for the faint-hearted.

Author Pamela Clark, however, considered the tip truck cake to be trickier than the train.

It is a book very much of its time with gender stereotypes on full display. The chapter for boys’ cakes predictably features cars, trucks and every other mode of transport, with a pirate thrown in. As you can guess, girls preferred the trappings of domesticity, with sewing machines, stoves and dressing tables featured. Not to mention the appearance of two cakes featuring cowboys and Indians.

There was the Rubber Ducky with its potato chip beak, the swimming pool with its chocolate finger biscuits surrounds and chopped jelly for water and Dolly Varden, a plastic doll surrounded by a dress made from cake and decorated with marshmallows.

A selection of the most popular cakes

Thankfully, I’m no longer required to decorate children’s birthday cakes, and my cake decorating these days is far simpler and generally consists of foliage of some description or slices of fruit I have dried in the oven. I think twice if I’m required to use a piping bag. The garden beds outside the kitchen are filled with flowers I can use for decorating, and even in winter, when there isn’t much colour around, I can usually find colourful or interestingly shaped leaves that serve as attractive decorations. A cake adorned with flowers requires no fancy techniques, great skill or uniformity and, without really trying, creates something eye-catching.

These individual pistachio and lemon cakes combine two of my favourite cake flavours. Topped with a light and not too sweet cream cheese icing, they are finished off with a selection of flowers and dried fruit that makes them almost too pretty to eat. Flowers, of course, are not a necessity, and if you don’t have access to spray-free flowers, a simple sprinkle of chopped pistachios and threads of lemon zest will work just as well.

The intensity of the green colour in the cake and icing will depend on the pistachios you use. However, even using blanched pistachios, the colour will be a delicate green, which I like, but you could, if you wish, add just a dot of green food colouring.

Lemon and Pistachio Cake

Makes 12 individual cakes

• 270 g plain flour

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• ½ teaspoon bicarb of soda

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 60 g ground pistachios

• 110 g butter, softened

• 110 g sunflower oil, or other neutral oil

• 220 g caster sugar

• 3 eggs

• 2 teaspoons lemon zest

• 225 g Greek yoghurt

• 120 ml lemon juice

• Assorted flowers for decorating

Icing

• 150 g cream cheese, softened

• 60 g icing sugar

• 70 ml cream

• 1 teaspoon lemon zest

• 20 g ground pistachios

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Grease 12 individual cake tins, or 12 holes of a tin with round, straight-sided holes.

Put the flour, baking powder, bicarb of soda, salt and ground pistachios in a bowl and use a balloon whisk to mix them and to remove any lumps.

Put the butter, sunflower oil and caster sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer and beat until light and fluffy and changed in colour. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition. Add the flour mixture, yoghurt and lemon juice and mix gently until the batter is smooth.

Spoon the batter into the holes of the cake tin (about 100 g in each indentation) and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the cake springs back when the centre is gently pressed. Cool for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the icing, place the cream cheese into the bowl of a food processor. Beat until it is smooth and slightly fluffy. Add the icing sugar, cream, lemon zest and pistachios and beat until light and smooth.

Dollop a spoonful of icing on the top of each cake and spread to the edges. You can use a piping bag if you wish to achieve a somewhat fancier finish. Decorate with edible flowers.

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Next week: the race that stops a nation + spring tartlets

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Each week, I share the latest instalment of the book I am writing here on Substack, Home Baked: a Year of Seasonal Baking. A subscription will ensure you don’t miss any of the stories and recipes. I love that my subscribers invite me into their inbox each week. If enjoy reading what I write, you might consider a paid subscription. This will give you access to previous recipes, as well as printer-friendly recipe cards and bonus material. There is also an additional newsletter on Friday, which is a mixed bag and touches on all manner of food topics. I’d love for you to be a part of it.

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