Spiderman and unicorn are the most popular children’s birthday cakes right now – how to make it yourself

As a child, Nada Bakery owner Michael Gray recalls having a train cake, ‘no different’ from the one on the cover of the classic Australian Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book.

His father, Peter Gray, opened the Wellington Patisserie in 1975, just five years before the original publication of the unassuming cookbook.

“The Train Book”, as it is sometimes called, has sold over a million copies in New Zealand and Australia, making it one of the best-selling and best-selling cookbooks around. most emblematic of the last three generations.

Most New Zealanders who grew up between the late 1970s and today will have a hidden childhood photo album with filmed (or Instagrammed) photos of its recipes. Including the Prime Minister’s daughter Jacinda Ardern, Neve, who had the piano and the rabbit for her first and second birthdays.

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The Artist’s Palette, Brown Bear, and Chocolate Finger Jelly Pool are other mainstays.

The recipe for a child-themed birthday cake is much the same today, according to Gray, who said pop culture and hobbies drive her most requested cakes. In 2022, superheroes – especially Spiderman – reign supreme, but Minions and Paw Patrol still get a glimpse.

“Movies, TV shows and toys are always the biggest influence on what kids want to have, it’s always changing,” Gray said, recalling a year of fidget spinner cakes and another of Thor hammers.

For parents who opt for DIY, he advises simplicity. For a Spiderman cake for example, don’t try to make a full body. Bake a round cake, cover it with red frosting, then decorate it with black frosting or licorice to make the webs for her mask, and white eyes.

“Look at the basics and don’t worry about the little details,” he said. “You want to get the face shape and the right colors. Leave the small details on the costume. When you put the little details in the wrong place, the cake doesn’t look quite right.

Gray adds that getting the parchment/’tracing paper out’ is helpful. Draw what you’re going to do, he says, especially if you’re cutting out shapes. And when in doubt, keep the cake extremely basic and decorate it with lollipops and coloring to bring it on theme.

For an added wow factor, incorporate toys as cake decorations, suggests Allyson Gofton, an Australian-born New Zealand cookbook author who worked as an apprentice at the Bauer. test kitchen during the publication of the book on birthday cakes.

“Most children are raised in family homes where the parents are not skilled chefs or cake decorators. Be creatively simple,” she said.

Green frosting on a cake topped with chocolate cookies, plus animal toys become a farm scene.

“It is not necessary to recreate the image exactly as it is, it is enough that it is recognizable by the child. Make it so that you can decorate a square or round cake with something on it. You don’t have to make a cake in the shape of anything.

One year, the children of Gofton wanted Harry Potter. So she made a classic castle by cutting out square cakes and layering them on top of each other, and putting a sign on them that said “Hogwarts.”

Another favorite was a butterfly, which Gofton made from a round cake cut in half. “You put the two curves on either side of the body together, and decorate with licorice for the antenna, and you have a butterfly.”

Gofton adds “there’s no shame” in buying a mix of packages.

“The standard of what you think you should be doing is usually much higher than what you should be doing and what your child would like.”