One of the key recipe developers of the iconic Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book has explained exactly how the 106 recipes were made, and surprisingly, said it wasn't an instant success.
Pamela Clark, now 75, worked as the chief home economist at the Women's Weekly test kitchen from 1969, planning meals that were then photographed for the magazine.
The idea of creating separate soft cover cookbooks started in the late 70s and became extremely popular, with the Sydney-based grandmother saying they were 'constantly reprinting them'.
'There was talk of doing a children's birthday gifts online book but people didn't think it would go well but I was in there fighting for it because I was interested in making the cakes,' Pamela told FEMAIL.
We worked on them for a couple of years in between the other cookbooks. Sometimes we would be midway through when the food editor would say it looked 'fantastic' and needed to be shot that moment.'
Pamela said that this is the reason most of the recipe photos look so 'rough', because they are prototypes in the process.
In the middle of 1980 the book was released but it didn't 'immediately run off the shelves'.
Pamela stayed decidedly quiet during this time, because it had partially been her idea, but she reasoned most people wouldn't buy the book unless they were preparing for a birthday - it was a smaller market than the AWW's other cookbooks.
source - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8044741/Recipe-developer-Womens-Weekly-Childrens-Birthday-Cake-Book-shares-secrets.html
source - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8044741/Recipe-developer-Womens-Weekly-Childrens-Birthday-Cake-Book-shares-secrets.html
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