Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book

Besides “Go Dog Go”, The Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book was my favourite book as a child. I used to love flicking through and looking at the colours and decorations. I came across it again the other day and although the “For Girls” and “For Boys” sections were a bit “hmmmmmm” the rest of it brought back so many memories. Here is a collection of the best and worst from the book.

WORST

Rubber Ducky

Rubber Ducky always scared me when I was younger. I think it was the eyes and the weird popcorn hair. It also looks really difficult to get right… maybe that’s why my Mum always told us as kids that the duck didn’t taste as good as other cakes.

Tennis Racquet

Imagine getting this cake as a kid. What a letdown! Where do you make the first dramatic cut? Through all the sticks?!? Just poor decorations as well. I think a kid who loved tennis would be better off with tennis court cake… or even a cake with Roger Federer’s face. I know I wouldn’t mind that.

All The “Friendly Folk”

They are absolutely terrifying. All of them. There’s nothing “friendly” about them. I remember as a kid getting to that part of the book and just closing it. Too scary. If I had to choose one, it would be “Robert Robot”. Least scary and covered in great decorations!

Candle

If my Mum said, “I’m going to make you a cake from this cookbook” and turned up with the candle… I’d kick off. All these cakes and you chose a candle… with a candle on top as the decoration. Someone’s played a practical joke putting that one in the book. Must have been running low on ideas.

Baby In Basket

Similar to the racquet, you’ve been cheated out of actual cake. Yes, it looks all pretty and nice, but once you rip the lace off, take out the weird handles and get that baby off your food… you’re left with a pretty boring cake.

BEST

Swimming Pool

Remember a few years back when everyone went crazy for cakes surrounded by KitKats and MnMs poured all over the top? (Or was that just a thing in my town?) Well this is like the OG of that! Jelly, cake, biscuit AND lollies. This cake truly has it all.

Hickory Dickory Watch

Big call putting a prune on a kid’s cake, but this time it has paid off. This is the first cake in the book, and they started strong! It’s beautiful. Decorated to the nines and a good solid amount of cake.

Candy Castle

This was such an iconic cake. My sister got this one year and it was/still is the highlight of my life. Look at all those decorations!! You’ve got wafers, smarties, liquorice all sorts, jubes, hard candies, what I’m guessing will be starburst chews AND there’s a good amount of cake still left when the cones come off.

Brown Bear

I am being a little bit biased here because I’ve had this cake for a good 90% of my birthday cakes. He is decorated differently from the books picture a lot but every time he is just so cute (there was one time that we couldn’t get the right things needed for the decorations so mum had to use MnM eyes and a teeth lolly for a mouth… we don’t talk about that year, it haunts me).

Choo-Choo Train

Hands down the most iconic cake. Still to this day I feel it’s too good for me to have. My cousin once had it and from my young, vague memory, it was a mammoth effort to decorate. This cake is a big flex on all the others.

Do you agree/disagree? Let me know what your favourite cake is…. And if it happens to be part of the Friendly Folk section keep your fingers nimble because you’re going to need to write out a lot of comments defending it.