2 hours ago
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I assume no parent aspires to give their offspring an unmemorable and vanilla childhood. I wanted to be a fun mum, creating love-soaked memories and quirky family traditions for my children right from the get-go. I wanted to be Bluey’s parents before Bluey even existed.
The Australian Women’s Weekly birthday cakes were destined to be a pillar of my perfectly imperfect parenting rituals. One child quickly became three, and that iconic recipe book was in constant rotation. In the early years, I would simply choose a cake that matched my very basic baking skills. I also only owned a round tin, so my kids’ early cakes were circle-shaped, or circle-adjacent: the swimming pool (a round cake filled with jelly), the cat (a round cake with ears) and the race track (two round cakes with the centres removed).
Three times a year, I would be reminded that I was not, in fact, a cake expert but a sleep-deprived mother fuelled by blind optimism, a packet of cake mix and zero useful utensils. As I attempted to create the perfect buttercream, I would curse my rookie naivety. Each birthday, I vowed to buy a proper icing knife or one of those fancy turntable thingies. I would then promptly forget this vow until the eve of the next birthday.
But the children grew, and so did their opinions. They wanted to choose their own cakes. For 11 years, I had successfully dodged the infamous duck cake. Until my eldest’s most recent birthday.
As yellow icing splattered across all kitchen surfaces, I questioned all my life choices while railing at the unfair expectations created by the AWW Test Kitchen. Was this some national prank? How was the head meant to remain attached to the body? Meanwhile, my eight-year-old provided live commentary. “Why is it so small, Mum?”, “Did you follow the instructions?”, and the most cutting remark of all: “It doesn’t really look like the one in the book.”
My duck cake ended up about a third the size of the original. The chip beak sat askew and the eyes were positioned in a way that lent the duck a distinctly unhinged expression. By then, I had handed decorating duties over to my children and abandoned all hope. In a final, desperate flourish, I served the cake on a tub of blue jelly, as if that might distract from the small but significant problem that the head wasn’t fully attached to the body.
When I shared my attempt online, I discovered it has delighted and traumatised generations. You either belong to one camp, the delighted recipients, or the other, the traumatised cake-makers forced to develop structural engineering skills on the fly.
Someone described my attempt as “Big Bird on crack.”
I am currently enjoying the sweet in-between time of the year when no birthday cakes are required. I now know what a crumb layer is, and I also know I will never perfect the AWW buttercream. I bake smarter not harder now, and buy my buttercream from the supermarket. Come March, I know I’ll be silently swearing about the palette knife I never bought, while gently nudging my daughter towards a round cake. The swimming pool? Maybe the Hickory Dickory watch?
If my children ever ask for parenting advice, among my many pearls of wisdom will be this: “Let your kids choose any cake. Except the duck cake.”
