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 (or simply AWWCBCB) is a popular recipe book focused on children's-themed birthday cakes published as part of The Australian Women's Weekly magazine cookbook series by Australian Consolidated Press, written by Maryanne Blacker and Pamela Clark. First published in 1980 and re-released in 2011, its cultural impact has been variously described as an "Australian cult classic", [1] a "cultural icon" and "national treasure". [2] Between its launch in 1980 and its relaunch in 2011, notwithstanding it having been out of print for a significant portion of the intervening period, [1] [3] the recipe book sold more than a million copies – earning its description as a "publishing phenomenon". [3]
During the 1970s and 80s, The Australian Women's Weekly was among the highest-selling magazines in Australia and published a wide range of titles for cake decorating, recipe and meal ideas in both book and magazine form.
There are 108 themed cakes appearing in the original edition, "largely composed of packet butter cake mix, Vienna cream icing and lollies", [4] although "for the over-achiever", the book offers a recipe for fresh butter cake at the front. [5]
The cover illustration is of the "train cake", for which it became synonymous — the cookbook is sometimes referred to as "the book with the train on the cover". [6] The swimming pool cake — a construction filled with jelly and tiny swimming figures — has been referred to as "the crowning glory" because to a parent, it seemed so difficult to engineer. [5] Some of the better-known cakes are: [7] [8]
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Some of the cakes featured in a Children's Party Foods -themed lift-out in September 1974. This included a Cowboys and Indians cake which looked very similar to the later Farmyard, and the Hickory Dickory Clock, later named Clock. [9]
Clark was inspired to create the cookbook after creating a tyrannosaurus-cake for a neighbour in 1978, but despite this inspiration, no dinosaur-themes cakes were included in the eventual publication. [4] The first edition was printed in 1980, and a "vintage" edition of the book was published in 2011 [1] — being reprinted four times in the first six months with initial sales of 100,000 copies. [3] As of 2015, the 2011 edition is in the circulating collection of over 40 public libraries across the country [10] while the original edition (in various reprints) remains in circulation in 27. [11] Four of the original recipes featuring cartoon characters were removed from the 2011 edition due to the publisher no longer having a license. [3] First editions can sell on eBay for 12 times their original price. [1]
External videos | |
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2018 interview with Pamela Clark [12] | |
Pamela Clark demonstrates how to make "The train cake" [13] |
Australian demographer Bernard Salt has suggested that the book modernised and "grandified" children's birthday party culture in Australia. [14] The author, Pamela Clark, has said that children would take the book to bed with them as bedtime reading, choosing which cake their parents would make for them, [15] and the publisher's test kitchen had a dedicated, much-used telephone help-line for parents making the cakes to a deadline. [16]
Because of the appealing decorative effects of the cakes, the book has garnered a nostalgic cult following including social media fan groups and projects to reproduce each cake. [8] In 2009, stand-up comedian Josh Earl included reference to the "train cake" in his routine. The segment was so popular he expanded it and the following year launched Josh Earl vs. the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book, [17] a show that continued through to 2015. [18] In 2016 all 107 cakes were baked and sold for a Canberra charity to raise money to support women with post- and ante-natal depression. [19] [20] In 2018 New Zealand born photographer Henry Hargreaves created an exhibition in Wellington called "Birthdays that will never come" celebrating children who would never have birthdays in New Zealand, by combining children's names that are banned in New Zealand with the "very 80s aesthetic" of the cakes in the cookbook, familiar to him from childhood. [21]
In a September 2018 interview on Throwback: Our Childhoods Revisited series, co-author Pamela Clark noted the heirloom quality of the cookbook, with old copies being passed down in families for generations of cake-making. [22]
In 2020, the book turned 40 and Clark noted that its 106 recipes have been birthday party staples ever since its first publication. Despite the elaborate cakes featured on the internet, "you get these ... daggy cakes ... and they're more popular than all of the upmarket ones." [23] In the first half of 2020, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, sales of the book increased by about 30%. The change was attributed to people being more at home as well as to nostalgia in difficult times. [24] Jacinda Ardern the New Zealand's Prime Minister at the time, publicly documented her own rendition of the "piano cake" for her daughter's 2nd birthday. [25] Also that year, the book and specifically the difficult-to-make "duck cake", were the subject of an episode of the popular Australian children's television show Bluey [26] – which was then recreated by celebrity chef Andrew Rea in 2024. [27] In 2023 the Bendigo Art Gallery curated a temporary exhibition about the cultural impact of the Australian Women's Weekly, for which they received over 3,000 community-submitted images of cakes produced from the book. [2]
Pavlova is a meringue-based dessert. Originating in either Australia or New Zealand in the early 20th century, it was named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. Taking the form of a cake-like circular block of baked meringue, pavlova has a crisp crust and soft, light inside. The confection is usually topped with fruit and whipped cream. The name is commonly pronounced pav-LOH-və or pahv-LOH-və, and occasionally closer to the name of the dancer, as PAHV-lə-və.
A lamington is an Australian cake made from squares of butter cake or sponge cake coated in an outer layer of chocolate sauce and rolled in desiccated coconut. The thin mixture is absorbed into the outside of the sponge cake and left to set, giving the cake a distinctive texture. A common variation has a layer of cream or strawberry jam between two lamington halves.
A cookbook or cookery book is a kitchen reference containing recipes.
A chocolate brownie, or simply a brownie, is a chocolate baked confection. Brownies come in a variety of forms and may be either fudgy or cakey, depending on their density. Brownies often, but not always, have a glossy "skin" on their upper crust referred to as flint. They may also include nuts, frosting, chocolate chips, or other ingredients. A variation made with brown sugar and vanilla rather than chocolate in the batter is called a blond brownie or blondie. The brownie was developed in the United States at the end of the 19th century and popularized there during the first half of the 20th century.
The Australian Women's Weekly, sometimes known as simply The Weekly, is an Australian monthly women's magazine published by Are Media in Sydney and founded in 1933. For many years it was the number one magazine in Australia before being outsold by the Australian edition of Better Homes and Gardens in 2014. As of February 2019, The Weekly has overtaken Better Homes and Gardens again, coming out on top as Australia's most read magazine. The magazine invested in the 2020 film I Am Woman about Helen Reddy, singer and feminist icon.
Carrot cake is cake that contains carrots mixed into the batter.
The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy is a cookbook by Hannah Glasse (1708–1770) first published in 1747. It was a bestseller for a century after its first publication, dominating the English-speaking market and making Glasse one of the most famous cookbook authors of her time. The book ran through at least 40 editions, many of which were copied without explicit author consent. It was published in Dublin from 1748, and in America from 1805.
Chocolate crackles are a popular children's confection in Australia and New Zealand, especially for birthday parties and at school fêtes. The earliest recipe found so far is from The Australian Women's Weekly in December 1937.
Ching-He Huang (Chinese: 黃瀞億; pinyin: Huáng Jìngyì; Wade–Giles: Huang2 Ching4-i4;, often known in English-language merely as Ching, is a Taiwanese-born British food writer and TV chef. She has appeared in a variety of television cooking programmes, and is the author of nine best-selling cookbooks. Ching is recognized as a foodie entrepreneur, having created her own food businesses. She has become known for Chinese cookery internationally through her TV programmes, books, noodle range, tableware range, and involvement in many campaigns and causes.
Margaret Isobel Fulton was a Scottish-born Australian food and cooking writer, journalist, author and commentator. She was the first of this genre of writers in Australia.
Dag is an Australian and New Zealand slang term, also daggy (adjective). In Australia, it is often used as an affectionate insult for someone who is, or is perceived to be, unfashionable, lacking self-consciousness about their appearance and/or with poor social skills yet affable and amusing. It is also used to describe an amusing, quirky and likeable person and is non-pejorative. The term was more widely used in the 1970s due to the popular New Zealand comedy of Fred Dagg. The term may be simply affectionate, such as when it was used to describe the recipes in the enduringly popular The Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book.
The Betty Crocker Cookbook is a cookbook written by staff at General Mills, the holders of the Betty Crocker trademark. The persona of Betty Crocker was invented by the Washburn-Crosby Company as a feminine "face" for the company's public relations. Early editions of the cookbook were ostensibly written by the character herself.
Annabel Rose Langbein is a New Zealand celebrity cook, food writer and publisher. She has published over 30 cookbooks, and co-produced three seasons of her award-winning television series, Annabel Langbein The Free Range Cook, which launched on the TV One network in New Zealand and has since screened in more than 90 countries.
Applesauce cake is a dessert cake prepared using apple sauce, flour and sugar as primary ingredients. Various spices are typically used, and it tends to be a moist cake. Several additional ingredients may also be used in its preparation, and it is sometimes prepared and served as a coffee cake. The cake dates back to early colonial times in the United States. National Applesauce Cake Day occurs annually on June 6 in the U.S.
Nadiya Jamir Hussain is a British television chef, author and television personality. She rose to fame after winning the sixth series of BBC's The Great British Bake Off in 2015. Since winning, she has signed contracts with the BBC to host the documentary The Chronicles of Nadiya and TV cookery series Nadiya's British Food Adventure and Nadiya's Family Favourites; co-presented The Big Family Cooking Showdown; and has become a regular contributor on The One Show.
The old-fashioned doughnut is a term used for a variety of cake doughnut prepared in the shape of a ring with a cracked surface and tapered edges around it. While many early cookbooks included recipes for "old-fashioned donuts" that were made with yeast, the distinctive cake doughnuts sold in doughnut shops are made with chemical leavener and may have crisper texture compared to other styles of cake doughnuts. The cracked surface is usually glazed or coated with sugar.
Carine Goren is an Israeli pastry chef, bestselling cookbook author, and television personality. She began her culinary career at age 26 as a recipe writer and editor at the Israeli food magazine Al Hashulchan, and in 2006 published her first dessert cookbook, Sweet Secrets. As of 2016 she has published five cookbooks, including one for children, and is the host of her own television baking show, also called Sweet Secrets. In 2016, she became a judge on the new Israeli reality television show Bake-Off Israel. She was the most googled person in Israel in 2015.
Pamela Clark is an Australian chef, cookbook author and food presenter, and has been associated with The Australian Women's Weekly for 50 years.
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