As my youngest child Maksim turned one today, I decorated my very last first birthday cake. With six children that’s a bit of a novelty cake baking milestone. I will of course continue to flick through favourite cake decorating cookbooks for other birthdays but this is IT for the first major celebration, the one where a single candle is blown out with the help of surrounding siblings and parents. 

There is a gap of seven years between myself and my youngest brother Petar and I would gladly fuss over him as we were growing up. I remember whenever he had a birthday, I would pour over The Australian Women’s Weekly Birthday Cake Book, trying decided which cake to make for him as a surprise. He loved the “Piano Cake” so much that I made it two years running! Now my children huddle together over that same book along with an assortment of other titles, weighing up what would be “the best” cake for them.

This year on behalf of their baby brother, they chose the classic “1 Smartie Cake”, an eye-catching and substantially sized edible numeral studded with smarties – 300 grams of little colourful chocolates to be exact. Let’s just say my fingers have seized up a tad from gently pressing each one into a sort of patterned formation all over the white chocolate ganache, vanilla buttermilk base. I also sorted out all the smarties into individual colour categories. Yes, it’s bordering on OCD but the action of sorting was actually quite satisfying. 

Was the birthday boy impressed by his mother’s efforts? Well, he was completely fascinated by the look and feel of the multi-coloured smarties, because he hasn’t ever come across them before. However he only took the tiniest mouthful of moist, creamy cake, preferring instead to feast on some of the aromatic cumin, coriander, cardamom and lemon roasted chickens that I had made as part of our family dinner. We enjoyed this along with a big bowl of sautéed veggie savoury rice and the crispiest iceberg lettuce salad. Looks like my youngest is a foodie, even at a tender age!