The Australian Women’s Weekly’s famous swimming pool cake from our Children’s Birthday Cake Book was an ’80s favourite and still impresses to this day.
Ingredients
Method
Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F. Grease deep 20cm (8-inch) round cake pan; line base and side with baking paper, extending paper 5cm above sides.
Make cake according to directions on packet. Spread mixture into pan; bake about 50 minutes. Stand cake in pan 5 minutes before turning, top-side up, onto wire rack to cool.
Meanwhile, make jelly according to directions on packet; pour into a shallow container. Refrigerate until set.
To make butter cream, beat butter until white as possible, gradually beat in half the sifted icing sugar then milk, then remaining icing sugar. Beat until smooth. Stir sifted cocoa into butter cream.
Level cake top; secure cake, cut-side down, on 30cm (12-inch) round cake board with a little butter cream.
Cut a recess into the centre of the cake, about 2cm in from the edge, and about 2.5cm deep. Remove and discard centre of cake; trim recess to neaten.
Spread chocolate butter cream all over edge and side of cake (but not into the hollowed-out area).
Position chocolate finger biscuits around side of cake, leaving an opening of about 5cm for ladder.
Use Musk Sticks and thin strips of licorice strap to make ladder; secure with butter cream, and toothpicks, if necessary. Position ladder on cake.
Paint stripes of food colouring onto Kool Mints to make beach balls; stand until set.
Push 2 small dolls through the jelly rings to make children in rubber floats; spread a little butter cream on heads of dolls, dip in green sprinkles to make bathing caps.
Secure 5cm pieces of jelly snakes together to make rubber mattress with a little butter cream, or toothpicks, if necessary. Position remaining baby doll on mattress.
Mash set jelly with a fork, spoon into the centre of the cake to represent water; position children, beach balls and umbrella in water.
How to make a swimming pool cake (video)
Swimming pool cake jelly tip
Summertime… and the livin’ is easy. Use blue jelly crystals if you think the green makes this pool look like it needs a good clean! Remove any toothpicks before cutting and serving the cake.
The history of The Australian Women’s Weekly swimming pool cake
The Australian Women’s Weekly‘s Deputy Editor Tiffany Dunk talks to original Test Kitchen staffer Sue Christmas about how the swimming pool cake came together.
There was a rule when it came to making creations for the Children’s Birthday Cake Book: Don’t let any cake go to waste. Whatever you cut off to make a new shape, must be reintroduced into your creation where possible.
So having a round cake as a base was a boon for the original Test Kitchen team when it was their turn to try their hand at a new entry.
Swimming pool cake design
“Once you had that round cake, for simplicity reasons, what could you turn it into,” she says of the team’s approach. “So that’s where the pool idea came – because at that time there were more above ground pools then than in ground pools out in the backyard. Then you start thinking, well, what do you need in the pool? The chocolate sticks were first as the fence around it and then the jelly for water.”
Next, Sue raided the lolly cupboard the team had been stocking since starting work on the cakes.
“We would buy any lollies we found that looked a bit different that we could use on a cake,” she explains. “That’s where I got the little round jellies to use as floaties for the dolls.”
Dolls, lollies & nail polish
The little dolls themselves were likely brought in by one of the team who had children, she guesses. And the beach balls were round sweets that she painted with nail polish. “You wouldn’t be allowed to do that today,” she laughs, noting the modern version uses food colouring instead.
Fellow Test Kitchen team member Sally Kennard, she recalls, walked past and suggested she add a ladder staircase – that came together with liquorice straps and musk sticks.
A team effort
“We worked as a team,” she says of how the members of the Test Kitchen would brainstorm to help the cakes come together. “We all pitched in and helped each other out.”
And when it came to the final touch, it was the Test Kitchen Food Director Ellen Sinclair who provided the inspiration.
“Before we’d go out for our Christmas dinner each year, Mrs S would make us peach daiquiris. So that umbrella in the pool would have been from the ones we stuck in those!
“The pool is actually quite a simple creation and maybe that’s why it’s one of the popular ones.”
