This story appears in our July 2025 Nostalgia issue , presented by Up, where we asked 13 professional bakers to recreate cakes from the iconic The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book.
For the duck cake , there wasn’t much room to stray from the original, so I followed the Women’s Weekly method right up to the decorating. I used a passionfruit Italian meringue to ice the cake, giving it some nice feather-like peaks.
Passionfruit Italian meringueIngredients
250g egg whites
450g caster sugar
150ml water
10g passionfruit powder
5g lemon yellow liquid food colouring
Method
Place egg whites into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk.
In a small saucepan, combine sugar and water, then bring the syrup up to 118°C.
Slowly pour the syrup over the egg whites while whisking.
Continue whisking until the meringue has cooled.
Add passionfruit powder and food colouring, and whisk until combined.
To decorate, use a palette knife to fully ice the duck cake in meringue. Once covered, use your hands to gently blob on extra meringue and pull away at an angle to form peaks – these should resemble feathers. Here’s a video showing how we do it at Messina for our bombe alaskas.
Once feathers are in place, complete duck decor with Smarties and liquorice. And, of course, crinkle-cut chips for the mouth.
The duck cake recipe first appeared in the The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book , published in 1980.
Dining and Cooking