Anyone want a little giggle-I’ve found a cake book from the 1970’s

[retainertrainer]

I’ve been sorting out my mum’s cupboards and came across the woman’s weekly birthday cake special. I’m going to take my inspiration from it for all family birthdays in the future.

Who knew you could make such masterpieces out of buttercream!

DH still insistson a rice moat.

Op - how did you manage to post so many photos? Whenever I exceed 3 in one day, the glitch tells me I can't do more than that in 24 hours, yet you did way over that yesterday!

Am definitely going to start doing rice moats!!

Oh cool I think I have found the hedgehog one! Not the original book but the persons mother taught her how to make it. Its this one: www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/how-to-make-a-chocolate-hedgehog-cake/

My Mum is so getting this for her 75th birthday this year .

(And yes I am vaguely aware of the infamous mumsnet hedgehog cake thread Can’t!)

Eva I used that recipe to make my DS's birthday cake this year - I'm not very dextrous so it was a bit of a mess (understatement) but it tasted lovely and there was loads of it!

I still have Cooking, Knitting and Sewing for girls, given to me in 1977. Teenage DD incredulous at the sexism, and the pictures illustrating every recipe showing the boy you're supposed to cook it for. (Also have the Hamlyn All Colour GH and the Dairy ones, and several weird 1930s ones with very lurid illustrations.)

My trendy young auntie got me a great one circa 1979: ‘Cooking is a game you can eat’ by Fay Maschler.

It probably had some sensible recipes for real food in it, what would I know, I was only interested in making the toffee, fudge and chocolate mousse. It was a great book for kids though.

It had the recipe for the orange jelly that you poured into an orange skin and cut into quarters that other posters have mentioned but my mum would never let me make it!

Also, my mum had this cake book, maybe it was a Marks and Spencer’s one. I was always longing to make some of them. One was called ‘mum’s flower basket cake’. It had a semicircular hard fondant kid, fondant flowers sticking out and basketwork painstakingly created using piped beige buttercream. Also one in the shape of a pumpkin for Halloween but I couldn’t work out how you got the fondant icing to realistically resemble a pumpkin like in the picture. I wish she still had it.

A hard fondant LID, not a hard fondant KID. The latter would be nicking your dinner money and that doesn’t sit well with a Mother’s Day cake.

HAHAHAHA at cooking, knitting and sewing for girls. Surely an anachronism even in 1977??

Nettle I clearly remember that basket cake you described - so we must have had that book as well, although I don't remember it specifically. Either way, you don't want any fondant tough guys hanging around!

I love the Mrs Beetons cakes which require 24 eggs, blocks of sugar and whole cow-fulls of butter.

You'd think so, but the intro has some gems such as 'Ask your mother if you can go shopping with her' and 'If your mother does not have a garlic crusher...'

Of course I loved it at the time and was totally oblivious!

@adagio Either of these fit the bill?

adagio
if you google for "Texas sheet cake" maybe you will see something like the cake you remember? . While the cake bakes you boil up the icing ingredients in the same saucepan and pour the hot icing over the hot cake when it comes out of the oven. Very fast, very easy (and very, very sweet).
It doesn't use evaporated milk, though. Most recipes say buttermilk, but regular milk works just fine.

Fanny Craddock 1970. Always found the lemon pigs disturbing, especially as there is no explanation of the contents of the trough...

@PhilomenaButterfly Rather disappointingly emergency bread is a recipe to make a quick loaf if the shops are shut and you’ve got your husbands packed lunch to make.

I just can’t imagine it in this 24 hour culture now

That really is disappointing. 😢

I have my grandmas cook book, she died 35 years ago ,ill get it out of my special box for you tomorrow and see what looks good

I had a children's cook book which had a recipe for hot dogs which looked like actual dogs. It had a suggestion to make him a little bowl out of a carved carrot or some such and the cartoon children were saying "Let's give him corn relish for dinner!"

I had no idea what corn relish was and spent hours pondering whether it was CORN relish, corn RELish or corn reLISH. I don't think I ever made a single recipe from the book.

Brilliant thread! I was looking at the photos on the first few pages and seeing what ingredients were used. A couple of birthday cakes, inc the monster one, had long pink sweets on top which are called musk sticks. I'm from the UK and hadn't heard of them before so Googled....ewwww ! Any Aussies here like to enlighten me as to what they taste like please?!

Just been looking at the photos posted on this thread of kids birthday cakes, many of which I remember. Back then birthday cakes used to be plain, maybe with coloured icing and happy birthday abacut piped on. So these cakes were amazing to kids.
And making cakes with buttercream or royal icing is harder. Many places you simply couldn't buy fondant icing then. Fondant icing is when cakes made at home started to look really fancy. Although it does not taste that great. Cakes used to taste much better, but not look as good.
I remember making christmas cakes and always doing a snowy scene with peaks, as I could never get the icing looking smooth enough if it was flat.

Bertie I remember that recipe and photo. Never made it though.
I have loads of the books posted on this thread. Was thinking of getting rid of them, but now tempted to hang on to them.
Lots of the recipes for basics in the past were great. I make bread and butter pudding with any leftover older bread fairly regularly. Easy, cheap, tasty and actually very little sugar and low fat. I am always amazed when I see more modern recipes for this and see how they have cream and a ton of sugar in them.

PrivateParkin that book (thanks google) is the St Michael book of cake icing and decorating by Pamela Dotter. Thinking of buying it actually...Amazon has used copies from 27p!

I've got this.

It's got pictures of all sorts of old cadbury's chocolate bars inside along with mad cakes.