It was 1948. Mahatma Gandhi had been assassinated in New Delhi. The Cold War had begun with the Berlin Blockade. The State of Israel was established. In Australia, the pipe-smoking Ben Chifley was Prime Minister and the first Holden car, the beloved FX, had rolled off the assembly line. Australians were eating Maxam luncheon beef from a can, discovering the joys of The Hawkins, “America’s finest pressure cooker”, and sending in recipes by the thousands to The Australian Women’s Weekly ₤2000 Cookery Contest. The slim little volume that published the winning recipes sold for two shillings and featured on its cover a jug and glasses of punch, a bowl of daisies, and an odd brown-pink-and-green layered cake with a piped-cream-and-strawberry ornamentation.
A Novelty Cauliflower Cake
The ₤50 Champion Cake was a Snowflake Cake with Egg-Nog Filling. The poor Australian cook who devised the recipe and its not-unappealing filling of egg yolks, sugar, butter, lemon rind, chopped walnuts, citron peel, raisins and brandy wasn’t named.
Other cake recipes in the edition included a Novelty Cauliflower Cake (the ‘cauliflower’ being a swirl of meringue with green-coloured icing for ‘leaves’), a Jamaican Sultana Cake and the Tutti Frutti Cake. And then there were the savoury recipes, among them, a Creamed Lamb Shape, Curried Rabbit in Grapefruit Cases, and the Casserole Australis (a preparation not the for the faint-hearted of minced steak and diced kidneys with mushrooms, grated carrots and apple, onion, green pepper, celery and bacon, with a “fluffy scone” topping).
A Young Newspaperwoman
I go nuts for old cookbooks and my foraging mother (addicted, to a disturbing, compulsive degree, to garage sales, secondhand shops, charity shops) has instructions to watch out for anything pre-1965. I’m a sucker for their retro appeal (especially love the little black and white line drawings in this edition) and join the dots of stains and spills and thumbed edges to try to imagine who might have owned and cooked from them. My theory on the owner of The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookery Book (Prize Recipes from our ₤2000 Cookery Contest): she was a career woman, perhaps a young newspaperwoman assigned to the women’s pages in a smoky newsroom full of men. She had cheered when, in 1944, fellow Australian newspaperwoman (and later editor of the Weekly), Esme Fentson wrote the article “Who Will Do the Housework?”, predicting that when men came home from the war, women would want to “discard the duster and earn pay envelopes of our own.” She had sighed when her despairing mother had given her yet another cookbook in the hope that her daughter might start looking for a husband instead of a scoop. She had laughed uproariously when, the one and only time she flicked through that cookbook, she had come upon a recipe for a cake designed to resemble a cauliflower and another, a banana log with toffee chips, designed to resemble a tree trunk. And the reason I have this theory about the owner of my copy of The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookery Book (Prize Recipes from our ₤2000 Cookery Contest)? There’s not a stain, spill or thumbed edge to be found on it.
A Banana Crisis
Despite Australia’s banana crisis (the continuing, devastating effects of a vicious cyclone on the North Queensland banana crop that has seen banana prices hit $12 a kilogram and more), I had bananas to burn. Long before the cyclone, someone had mentioned to me that bananas past their use-by-date freeze well. So my freezer was full of them. And how could I resist a recipe for a banana cake designed to resemble a tree trunk?
According to The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookery Book (Prize Recipes from our ₤2000 Cookery Contest), the cook of this banana cake should “rough the icing with a fork to represent bark”. Presumably the bark effect becomes even more pronounced with the addition of the toffee chips. Still, hard as it was, I fought the overwhelming temptation to make a cake that looks like a tree trunk. The truth was, I simply wanted to use up some bananas. And the result? Not especially memorable. I’m not sure whether it was because my conversions from imperial to metric were off (see below), or too late I forgot to adjust cooking temperature and time in accordance with the firepower of a modern, fan-forced oven, or perhaps it was just a so-so recipe. Whatever, I’m on the prowl now for a better banana cake recipe to use up that freezer-full of bananas. And it doesn’t have to resemble a tree trunk.
Your help will be greatly appreciated. Please send emergency banana cake recipes.
Banana Log with Toffee Chips
Cake:
4oz margarine or butter (113g)
4oz sugar (113g)
Pinch grated lemon rind
2 eggs
8oz self-raising flour (226g)
3 bananas
¼ pint milk (½ cup)
1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
Icing:
3 dessertspoons butter
2 cups icing sugar
1 dessertspoon cocoa
Pinch salt
1 dessertspoon coffee essence
½ teaspoon vanilla
Toffee Chips:
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Cake: cream shortening with sugar and lemon rind. Add beaten eggs. Lightly fold in sifted flour, then thoroughly mashed bananas. Lastly fold in soda dissolved in milk. Turn into greased log tin or loaf-tin, bake in moderate oven 50 to 55 minutes.
Allow to stand in a tin a few minutes before turning on to cake-cooler.
When quite cold, spread all over with icing, rough up with fork to represent bark; decorate with toffee chips.
Icing: Beat butter until soft and white, gradually add sifted icing sugar, salt and cocoa. Continue beating until well-mixed. Gradually add coffee essence and vanilla.
Toffee chips: Place sugar, water and lemon juice in saucepan, stir over low heat until sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil, cook until a pale amber colour. Pour into buttered tin; when cold and set, break into pieces.
