The Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book facts for kids
Cover of the 1980 edition
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| Author | Maryanne Blacker Pamela Clark |
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| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Australian Women's Weekly cookbooks |
| Subject | Birthday cakes |
| Published |
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| Pages | 128 |
| ISBN | 0949892742 |
The Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book is a very famous recipe book from Australia. It's all about making fun and creative birthday cakes for kids! This book was first released in 1980 and came out again in 2011. It quickly became a "cult classic" in Australia, meaning lots of people loved it and remembered it fondly. Over a million copies of the book were sold, even though it wasn't always available in stores.
Back in the 1970s and 80s, The Australian Women's Weekly magazine was super popular. They published many books and magazines with ideas for cake decorating, recipes, and meals.
Cool Cake Designs and Themes
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The first edition of the book has 108 different cake designs. Most of these cakes are made using a simple packet butter cake mix, creamy icing, and lots of lollies. But if you wanted to be super fancy, the book also had a recipe for making butter cake from scratch!
The "train cake" is on the cover of the book, and it's so famous that people sometimes just call the book "the book with the train on the cover." Another amazing cake is the "swimming pool cake." It's made with green jelly for the water and tiny swimming figures, which made it look really hard to create!
Here are some of the well-known cakes from the book:
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How the Book Was Published
Some of the cake ideas first appeared in a special magazine section about Children's Party Foods in 1974. For example, a "Cowboys and Indians" cake looked a lot like the later "Farmyard" cake. The "Hickory Dickory Clock" cake was later just called "Clock."
Pamela Clark, one of the authors, got the idea for the book after making a tyrannosaurus cake for a neighbor in 1978. Even though this inspired her, no dinosaur cakes ended up in the book! The first edition came out in 1980. A "vintage" edition was published in 2011 and was so popular that it was reprinted four times in just six months, selling 100,000 copies.
By 2015, the 2011 edition was available in over 40 public libraries across Australia. The original 1980 edition is still found in 27 libraries. Four recipes with cartoon characters were removed from the 2011 edition because the publisher no longer had permission to use them. Old first editions of the book can sometimes sell for much more than their original price online!
Its Big Impact and Legacy
A researcher named Bernard Salt believes this book changed how children's birthday parties were celebrated in Australia, making the cakes much more grand and special. Pamela Clark, the author, shared that kids would even take the book to bed with them to decide which cake their parents should make! The publisher even had a special phone line for parents who needed help making the cakes on time.
Because the cakes look so fun and decorative, the book has a special place in people's memories. Many adults feel nostalgic about it. There are even social media groups where fans try to bake every single cake from the book!
In 2009, comedian Josh Earl talked about the "train cake" in his show. It was so popular that he created a whole show called Josh Earl vs. the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book, which he performed until 2015. In 2016, all 107 cakes from the book were baked and sold for a charity event in Canberra. The money raised helped women dealing with post- and ante-natal depression.
In 2018, photographer Henry Hargreaves created an art show in Wellington, New Zealand. He combined children's names that are not allowed in New Zealand with the "very 80s look" of the cakes from the cookbook. This was a way to celebrate children who would never have birthdays in New Zealand.
In a 2018 interview, Pamela Clark mentioned that old copies of the cookbook are often passed down through families. This means different generations use the same book to make cakes!
In 2020, the book turned 40 years old. Clark noted that its 106 recipes have been a big part of birthday parties ever since it was first published. She said that even with all the fancy cakes on the internet, these "daggy cakes" from the book are still more popular. In the first half of 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, sales of the book went up by about 30%. This was likely because people were spending more time at home and felt nostalgic during a difficult time.
The book, especially the tricky "duck cake," was even featured in an episode of the popular Australian children's TV show Bluey in 2020.
