The untold stress of a cake sculpting cookbook

Why did all the old cake cookbooks think we'd be capable of creating complicated masterpieces?

Afternoon,

Welcome to another An Omelette letter.

The 1960s was a great time for cake cookbooks though they have always made me wonder — did anyone actually achieve any of these cakes? And if so, HOW?

Your pal,
Katie x

Perhaps people (women) had more time on their hands back in 1967, when the Cake Decorating and Sugarcraft cookbook was first published, because just a casual leaf through its pages has made me feel like the most incompetent person in the world.

Although the front section deals with the basics — icings, frostings and fillings — by page 39 we are already at cake decorations, and by page 74 we are trusted to make baskets and wheelbarrows filled with roses.

As a vintage cookbook seller I have seen many books dedicated to the art of cake decorating. Yet reading them I have never felt I could ever achieve even a swan moulded from almond paste.

But what took the biscuit (or cake, if you prefer), was this —

A three-tier Wedgwood cake.

I am a 60s housewife staring forlornly at the page. I cannot make this. Mrs Wallace, the cookbook’s author, tells us it really is rather simple. Just trace a Wedgwood vase (ha) or catalogue picture. Cover your tracing in wax paper, pipe the outline, fill the centre. Job done.

Except, of course, it isn’t.

“[…] by following the author’s clear and precise instructions, with helpful line drawings, you will have no difficulty in icing a special occasion cake to a standard you may have thought impossible to achieve.”

Look at those tiny little Wedgwood figures; so intricate, so delicate. They are perfect. The worse thing about these cookbooks is the false sense of security they fill you with. The cakes are presented as if we can actually make them! As if it really is as simple as tracing a Wedgwood figure and piping it. I imagine for decades home bakers thought they were terrible at baking because they were never able to get their Swiss roll to resemble a Christmas cracker.

The beauty of homemade cakes, I think, comes from the imperfections. A wonky Thomas the Tank Engine, a melting Peter Rabbit. Baking someone a cake is an act of love. But if anyone fancies making me a three-tier Wedgwood masterpiece I wouldn’t say no.

Were you ever baked one of these amazing cakes? Or were you the baker?! If so, I have to know!