The Women's Weekly Train Cake

(Photo by the lovely Amy Robinson)

Remember back in the good ol' days when every year on your birthday your Mum would pull off the shelf the Women's Weekly Kids Birthday Cake cookbook (which they are reprinting next year FYI) and you were allowed to thumb through the well worn pages and pick out the cake you wanted for your birthday? Be it the farm cake, the barbie doll princess, The letters one to nine decorated with sliced marshmallow flowers and liquorice racing tracks, the swimming pool, the lion or the best one of all, the train?

We had a surprise party for a friend of ours on Saturday. It was a good old fashioned party with streamers, balloons on the front door (semi giving away the surprise), sausage rolls and lava-hot party pies. I re-ignited my deep-seated fear of people popping balloons with their bare hands and got all misty-eyed over the nearly forgotten birthday cake, usually replaced these days with the apparently more fashionable macaron tower or cupcake tier. What could be better than a chocolate train cake filled with a cargo of marshmallows and mini m'n'm's? Nuffin mate.