Birthday cakes have become the new battleground for fathers. I blame Hamish Blake

5 hours ago 4

Nobody has fun at children’s birthday parties. Not the guests forced to attend, not the parents forced to host and definitely not the child whose birthday it is. From start to finish, they are an obligation to be met and a box to be ticked, the only saving grace being the promise of a lolly bag before leaving.

I know this because I attend them regularly, the consequence of having a toddler in daycare. Too many weekends spent singing Happy Birthday to children whose names I struggle to remember. Happy birthday … I want to say, Hazel? No, wait, Maisie?

The one thing all these parties have in common, aside from being held at places with names such as FunZone or InflatableWorld, is elaborate birthday cakes made by smug fathers.

TV personality and radio host, Hamish Blake, has become widely celebrated for his annual attempts at baking complex birthday cakes for his children.

Last weekend, at a nondescript bowling club in the suburbs, I watched a man loudly announce, “Cake coming through”, before presenting a perfect recreation of the Heeler house from Bluey, complete with Bluey and Bingo playing on the front porch (which was made from fondant).

Everyone congratulated him on a job well done, while he assured us all it was “No big deal! A piece of cake, literally! Haha!” Admittedly, his daughter (I want to say Stella? No, wait, Ella) looked impressed, playing with the edible front door while her father posed for photos next to his handiwork.

If this were an isolated incident, it wouldn’t bother me, but over the past couple of years, birthday cakes have become the new battleground for fathers to prove their worth as parents – a uniquely modern problem for which there is one person to blame: Hamish Blake.

Hamish Blake’s cake nights attract millions of viewers on Instagram.

Now, before we proceed, a disclaimer. Hamish Blake belongs to that select group of famous Australians whom everyone universally loves, right up there alongside Hugh Jackman (pre-divorce) and Cathy Freeman (post-Olympics). He’s funny, smart and most importantly, he seems like a regular guy.

Sure, he might be a three-time Gold Logie winner and married to the phenomenally successful Zoe Foster Blake, who sold her 51.5 per cent stake of beauty brand Go-To to the ASX-listed beauty conglomerate BWX for $89 million in 2021, but besides that, he’s just like you and me!

Outside his successful career as a TV personality and radio host, Blake has become widely celebrated for his annual attempts at baking complex birthday cakes for his children.

“Cake night”, as it’s now called (though I would’ve gone with “The Great Australian Blake Off”), started in 2017, when his then-three-year-old son requested a cake based on the movie Cars. Blake documented the entire agonising process on Instagram, a whiskey-soaked descent into madness that didn’t end until the early hours of the morning.

The content proved popular and, since then, Blake has continued to up his baking game, delivering the kind of cakes that make the rest of us look bad, including a sheep with a moving electronic head, a flawless recreation of the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin, including glowing eyes and mouth, and a Pikachu bursting out of a Pokémon ball.

Seriously, how is anyone meant to compete with this?

Each time, millions of people tune in, among them my wife, Kate, and apparently every other dad I know. Objectively, this is a positive development; the more dads bake, the better.

However, it brings with it a worrying rise in expectations. On the way home from the Bluey birthday cake party, Kate suggested that for our son’s birthday this year, “we” (I) should make an “impressive” (difficult) cake for his party.

Looking to get ahead of the curve, I immediately agreed, volunteering to make the Swimming Pool cake from The Australian Women’s Weekly cookbook. It’s a classic, I explained, and takes only two hours to prep and cook, mainly using a packet cake mix and packet lime jelly crystals. Plus, Archie loves swimming!

The swimming pool cake from The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book.

Unfortunately for me, our son, who every single week asks when his birthday is, overheard this conversation and began to outline his vision.

He would like a dinosaur cake featuring a T. rex, but the T. rex must be fighting a giraffe. There should also be a dolphin. Obviously, it was incumbent on me to explain that none of these animals ever interact, and to have them do so in cake form would be embarrassing.

Thankfully, his birthday isn’t until December, so I have until then to decide. Either I succumb to the unrealistic standards Hamish Blake has unwittingly unleashed upon the dads of this country, or take the coward’s way out and spend $115 on a dinosaur cake from a local bakery and accept that I don’t love my son.

Of course, there is a third option. Purchase the cake, take some videos of me adding frosting to it late at night, and then tell everyone at the party I spent eight hours creating it (but it’s no big deal!) I call that: Fake it ’til you make it, and pretend you Hamish Blaked it.

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