Who had the clown cake? Who had the terrible duck with chips for a beak? Who had that bloody train cake? In celebration of Jacinda Ardern’s laudable attempt at the piano cake for two-year-old Neve, we revisit the book that defined the birthday parties of your childhood.

A version of this article was first published in September 2018.

If you grew up in New Zealand or Australia in the 80s or 90s, your household probably had a copy of the Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book (AWWCBCB). From before an era when a cookbook needed a TV-ready or Instagram-famous author to sell, this instructional masterpiece somehow became ubiquitous. First published in 1980, the AWWCBCB has sold over a million copies – despite being out of print for years at a time – and inspired comedians, bloggers, Facebook groups and now, Jacinda Ardern.

As a kid, I spent hours reading this book as if it were any other picture book, and I recently rediscovered it thanks to a Reddit post where someone had scanned every single page. The comments confirmed that this book was – and continues to be – hugely important to Kiwi childhoods. Mention this book to anyone and they’ve likely eaten, baked (or both) a cake from this book. Almost everyone I know remembers being thrown or attending a birthday party with one of these cakes, and plenty of us have a cake we always wanted but never got. For me, that cake was the iconic candy castle, with its ice cream cone turrets adorned with pink Smarties.

My mum Vicki, who raised me and my two brothers in Christchurch in the ’90s, says every mother she knew baked from the book, and speaks of the intense rivalry that the AWWCBCB created. She says “it was extremely competitive, and I always felt inferior. There was no sisterhood where birthday cakes were concerned. Most importantly, you scored bragging rights by how late at night you started the damn thing after the kids were in bed, and then how many hours it took you to complete”.

Sounds like the baking equivalent of getting an A on an essay, then saying that you only started it the night before it was due.

My mum also notes that “it’s important to remember this way in the days before the Internet – or at least Internet for me and my housewife friends – so we were greatly reliant on print. Of course, there were no retail outlets that sold cake either. It was the dark ages. It seems odd now, however, that we all made the same birthday cakes.”

Mum’s copy, which I must’ve spent 100+ hours of my life in the fond company of, was lost in the depths of a storage unit, but I managed to grab a copy on Trade Me. Some of the cakes are exquisite and some abhorrent. Some have stood the test of time, and others should be left in the 1980s with Rogernomics.

I have tried to compile a list of just five of the worst things about the book.

1) The lack of actual baking instruction

Although I’ve come to think of this as the cookbook that defined a generation, there is very little actual cooking instruction in this book. Some brief instruction sets the reader up for making butter cake, Vienna cream and ‘fluffy frosting’, and then launches into the most important part: the decorating.

This is essentially a craft book where all the materials just happen to be edible.

You’re expected to be a licorice artisan, dye desiccated coconut every colour of the rainbow, pipe decorations with expert accuracy and fashion delicate flowers from marshmallows. Many of the cakes require complex diagrams to take the reader from a square butter cake to castle, duck or dump truck. However, many of the cakes in the book have a charmingly sloppy devil-may-care look about them, offering some solace to frazzled parents everywhere.

2) The ridiculous train cake

The train has been called ‘the Mount Everest of cakes’ and is a particular sore spot for my mum. She describes showing up to a joint birthday party for my brother and one of his friends having lovingly crafted the classic ‘hickory dickory dock’ cake as her contribution, and being totally upstaged by the train cake. This feat of engineering requires a metre-long display board and the commitment to crafting individual carriages and couplings and even popcorn steam coming from the engine.

It seems that parents today still hold this cake up as a bastion of culinary art, as I’ve seen plenty of contemporary renditions.

3) The chapter headings

Harking back to the good old days when men were men and women made the cakes, a good portion of the AWWCBCB‘s cakes are separated by gender. It’s exactly what you’d expect. The ‘For Boys’ chapter features rocket ships, pirates, race cars, boats and planes – this myriad of modes of transport preparing your son for a career in engineering. The ‘For Girls’ chapter features sewing machines, dressing tables, baby baskets and even a stove (complete with sausages made of chocolate hail), to help resign your daughter to a life of domestic servitude.

4) The abundance of clown cakes

For the children who love horrifying clowns and John Wayne Gacy Jr fangirls. Bring one of these out during an It viewing party to really double down on the nightmarishness. Nothing says ‘conquering your clown phobia’ like eating a clown’s face.

5) There are TWO ‘cowboys and Indians’ cakes

Not satisfied with romanticising colonisation just once in a children’s cake book, there are two of these packet-mix delights depicting cowboys and Native Americans in conflict. Ah, it really was the glory days!

So which is your favourite? Would you ever try to tackle one of these cakes now? One thing’s for sure, the Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Cake Book will live on.

The duo behind Parnell eatery Simon & Lee talk Gochu, their latest venture in Auckland’s Commercial Bay, and the emerging mainstream popularity of Korean cuisine.

Three months ago, before alert levels were even a thing, a small group of guests was invited to have their first taste of Gochu’s menu. With everything from fresh Kaipara oysters served with kimchi consommé to chilli pork buns paired with beurre blanc dip, the menu was a multi-course feast full of freshness and flavour, giving diners a glimpse into what the restaurant had in store ahead of its opening in two weeks’ time.

Then lockdown happened and everything came to a sudden, grinding halt. Commercial Bay, where Gochu resides on the second floor, was scheduled to open that very week. Instead, it was forced to delay its opening – after a string of already delayed openings – one last time. 

“We first signed the lease [for the space] in January 2018 for an April 2019 opening,” Gochu co-owners Oliver Simon and David Lee recall. “Then it got pushed back to September and then to March this year. Then lockdown happened so it got pushed back again.” But finally, on June 11, Commercial Bay managed to open its doors and, along with it, Auckland’s latest “New Korean” restaurant. 

The idea for Gochu, which means both chilli pepper and a certain part of the male anatomy (“it’s an intentional double entendre!” they laugh) was first floated by Simon and Lee more than a year ago. In 2019, the duo sold their eponymous Parnell eatery – which helped bring bibimbap (mixed rice with vegetables) and mahnduguk (dumplings with broth) to Auckland’s crowded brunch scene – to focus on their Commercial Bay offerings, which also include hot dog joint Good Dog Bad Dog. Chefs Jason Kim and Nathan Lord also joined the team, with the former’s childhood and travels through Korea serving as the primary inspiration for the menu.

Kim, who’s originally from South Korea like Lee, has worked at a number of esteemed Auckland establishments like Sidart, Cassia and Clooney in recent years. But with Gochu, Kim embraces the full breadth and depth of a culture of food he knows and loves, showcasing the many sides of Korean cuisine with dishes like buttery smooth mulhwe (raw kingfish), smoky LA galbi (marinated barbecue short ribs), and spicy charred chicken smothered in gochujang (chilli paste).

Meanwhile, Lee is an experienced hospo figure in his own right, having formerly been at the helm of some of Auckland’s most popular cafes such as Little King, Dear Jervois, and Major Sprout, and still has a stake in Newmarket eatery The Candy Shop. But he didn’t start off in hospitality; when he came to New Zealand 17 years ago, he was working in the exporting business, helping to ship New Zealand-made products like mānuka honey and health supplements, which are popular in many Asian markets. 

“But I fell in love with the cafe culture here,” says Lee. “I wanted to get involved but I couldn’t find work … eventually I worked [at a cafe] washing dishes. I learnt a lot there.” (Although he adds he was paid in food, not cash, for his work.)

Nevertheless, the experience gave Lee the impetus to jump into the industry headfirst where he eventually found success. In 2014, while he was at Dear Jervois, he met Simon, who was working at Coffee Supreme at the time. Simon had been introduced to Korean food while frequenting Queen Street’s Kang Nam Station – the shabby yet somewhat iconic trailer-restaurant – during a stint at Huffer, stopping by for noodles and rice bowls on a daily basis. Soon, the two bonded over their shared love of Korean food and, in 2017, launched Simon and Lee. They’ve collaborated with each other ever since.

While Auckland has long been home to a thriving Korean community whose tastebuds have been sated by a network of locally run grocery stores and restaurants, it’s only in recent years that Korean cuisine has managed to find a footing amid the city’s wider culinary landscape. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon to find supermarket shelves stocked with jars of kimchi and snack-size packs of gim (roasted seaweed), while eateries like Simon & Lee, as well as Lorne Street’s The Kimchi Project and Grey Lynn’s Tiger Burger, have helped further democratise Korean flavours to Auckland’s middle-class masses. 

“I definitely think it’s becoming more mainstream,” says Lee on Korean food’s emerging popularity. “People didn’t really know about it like 10 years ago. I think if we’d done something like this back then people would’ve been like ‘oh, it’s too spicy!’ but I think now is the right time.” 

“People used to think bibimbap was weird when it’s literally just like rice and vegetables!” Simon adds. “[With Gochu] we definitely want to show people that Korean food is more than just kimchi, gochujang, and Korean barbecue. There are so many more flavours out there to try.”

The restaurant-style setting of Gochu is a natural next step, and it’s not the only Korean-inspired eatery that’s opened in recent weeks to much excitement. In Ponsonby, Paulee (who previously worked at Simon & Lee) and Lisa Lee (former chef at Honey Bones) have launched Ockhee, a new casual contemporary dining option with plenty of vegetarian and vegan-friendly options like gamjajeon (potato fritter), makguksoo (buckwheat noodles in chilled broth), and the somewhat unconventional persimmon kimchi. 

While the concept behind Gochu is in many ways is an extension of what was started with Simon and Lee, the pair point out there are some notable differences. “Simon & Lee was more cafe food, more brunch oriented, whereas Gochu is a bit more elevated,” says Simon. “It’s not fine dining, but it’s also more than just introductory flavours, and a lot of the dishes are designed to be shared rather than just having one dish.”

In that sense, Gochu embodies an important part of Korean food culture as sharing and communal spirit often underpin the dining experience: Korean barbecue involves guests cooking meat around a grill together, banchan (small side dishes) are set out for everyone to enjoy, and jjigaes (stews) are often left to sizzle away at the centre of the table. It’s a collective experience, not an atomised one, and that’s not exactly a bad thing in times like these.