If you’ve ever made (or for the younger ones, blown out the candles on) a birthday cake that is shaped both like a racetrack AND and a figure eight, then this post is for you.
Back in the ’80s, before kids birthday parties were pretentious all day affairs and every kid received a pass the parcel prize so their feelings weren’t hurt, there was only one thing every kid cared about: Which cake their mum made them from THIS book:
Who else remembers pouring over this gem - either as a kid or with your kids - as if it were a picture book, fantasising about the cake you would beg your mother to make you for your next birthday? Regardless of actual baking abilities, it was all about the tradition and the mesmerised faces as the lights went down and the cake was triumphantly presented to bring the party to a climax.
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First published in 1980, The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book has sold more than half a million copies. That’s an awful lot of rocket ship and train cakes that have been attempted (and as can be seen in our gallery below, failed) over the years.
After extensive polling, consideration, and nostalgic reminiscing of childhood memories, we've narrowed it down and declared the following 13 cakes from the Australian Women’s Weekly Cake Book, the most amazing.
13. The old woman who lived in a shoe
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12. The maypole
11. The robot
10. The rubber ducky
9. The piano
8. The rabbit
7. Humpty Dumpty
6. The racetrack
5. The farm
4. The train
3. The good witch
2. The swimming pool
NUMBER 1. The castle
So how did we do? Do you agree with our number one? Which cake did your mum make you from the AWW Birthday Cake book and which one have you attempted to bake yourself? Did you nail it or completely screw it up?
If you did screw it up then you might want to make yourself feel better by taking a look through our gallery of cake fails.
