Will we ever blow out candles on a birthday cake again? Right now it's hard to imagine.
But nasty pandemic,try as you might,you cannot extinguish our nostalgia buzz,stoked by the 40th anniversary release ofThe Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book. Or as I like to call it,food porn for 10-year-olds.
The book is a phenomenon,no matter which way you ice it. Since it was released in 1980,there have been 28 editions,and well over half a million sales worldwide. That's a lot of colourful cakes and happy kids. And boy,was I was one of them.
Oh the hours I spent hunched over that bendy sticky-paged book through the 1980s,studying each picture in minute detail,pondering the big questions like is Barbie wearing knickers under her cake skirt?
Does the duck's crinkle chip bill really belong on a sweet cake?
Can a 90 per cent jelly swimming pool actually be classified"cake",and where do you stick the candles?
The recipes themselves were never that complicated. The base consisted of packet cake mix and the icing was usually of the exotic-sounding"Vienna cream"variety,turned fluoro by food colouring.
No,the skill came in the engineering. Poor mums around the country,mine included,were presented regularly with wish lists. The piano. The castle. The racing car. And most impressive of all,that cover star train,with its plume of gravity-defying popcorn steam.
Year after year,mum delivered the goods,sometimes propped up by a can of beans,icing a little wonky,yet Instagrammable way before that was a thing.
And here it is again come to brighten a dreary day. Same recipes. Same photos. Same feeling of excitement when you flip through it.
Can you still have a Leonard the Lion cake when you're in your 40s,I wonder,when you're not even allowed to have a party?
Of course you can. It's an"iso project"I can get behind. Packet mix aisle,I'm coming for you.