I have quite a collection of cake decorating books, most of them by The Australian Women’s Weekly, including their original publication which is now known as the “vintage” version. In fact the number of birthday cake books has increased with the number of children I have, from one beautiful baby to half a dozen children with enthusiastic appetites. I’m sure you can imagine how well thumbed and well loved those books are by now. 

Yesterday, my daughter Sofia celebrated her seventh birthday and out of all the possible cakes beautifully photographed in the birthday books, Sofia chose a Veggie Patch cake. That’s right, a cake fashioned to look like a vegetable garden. Not a traditional Barbie cake, nor a fairytale princess castle, not a flutter of an iced butterfly design, or an edible garland of marshmallow petal flowers. Forget the obvious choices, those cake designs that I have laboriously shaped and smothered with fondant and icing in the past for Sofia and her older two sisters. Sofia was adamant she wanted a Veggie Patch birthday cake and so that is what I made for her. 


For the decorations, I used an assortment of confectionary, dried apricots and ready to pipe icing from my local Coles supermarket, along with green fondant from The Essential Ingredient in Rozelle. I fashioned mini tomatoes, cauliflowers, veggie vine and carrots, adding fresh mint leaves for the carrot tops. 

The home baked Chocolate Sour Cream Cake was covered in chocolate ganache and then sprinkled with Milo, gently pressed into place using a long metal spatula. An apple green ribbon with white spots ribbon finished off the cheery birthday creation. 

Although my finished product didn’t exactly resemble the image in the cake book – bearing in mind that I am a home cook and not a professional cake artist – my spirited seven year old daughter was thrilled. And that’s what counts.