You won’t know her name, but this 80-year-old Sydneysider is probably responsible for some of the best and worst moments in your family’s life.
The creator of iconic cakes from the Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Cake Book, including the “choo-choo train” and the “rubber ducky”, Agnes Lee is the woman thousands of Australian children can thank for the elaborate frosted creations that made their birthdays feel special, and the person even more parents cursed at 11pm the night before as they wrangled a decapitated duck.
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It’s been 45 years since this classic book first went to print, but Lee is only now seeing its impact and reach as a new generation of Australians bakes the cakes they grew up with for their own children.
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The rubber ducky, in particular, has risen to global fame after its inclusion in a 2020 episode of Australian animated hit Bluey, currently the most streamed TV show in the US. Google search results for “duck cake” – also the name of the episode – have steadily risen in the years since as fans search for recipes and make their own versions. The show’s distributor, BBC Studios, is opening a pop-up cafe this weekend in Sydney where kids can make cupcakes, inspired by its success.
“No one knew about it at the time,” Lee says. “It was a quiet little birthday cake book … But now when I go to functions, I see men in their late 30s or early 40s – businessmen, successful businessmen – holding a cake book in their hand, and sheepishly, they walk up to me and ask me to sign it. You can see their eyes lit up! … It makes me really feel like I’ve done something.”
It’s quite a legacy for this former food tech teacher from Hong Kong who, before stepping into the Women’s Weekly test kitchen, had never made a cake in her life.
Agnes Lee faked it until she made it. Credit: Sam Mooy
The woman behind Australia’s favourite cake
“I got the job the second week I arrived in Australia,” Lee says. “I came on a Thursday or Friday in 1978. I got up very early on the Saturday, bought a paper, saw a tiny ad for the test kitchen and walked to a phone booth to call … When you have a family, you worry [about not having work]. I didn’t even know what a test kitchen is.”
Lee was interviewed on a Tuesday and got the job, developing recipes for the magazine, the same day – but not without some reservations.
Agnes Lee (second from left) in her first year, 1978, at the Australian Women’s Weekly test kitchen. Food editor Ellen Sinclair is pictured on the far left.
“At that time in Hong Kong, we didn’t make cakes,” she says. “When Ellen Sinclair, the food editor, brought me into the kitchen, the girls were making cakes and I quietly told myself: ‘I can’t handle this!’ … I thought for sure I would get the sack! But I just pushed myself.”
She started with a party trick: sculpting marshmallows into flowers by cutting them in four and fashioning sticky petals. Then came the rocket: a terrifyingly tall assemblage of cake and candy canes atop an aluminum foil blaster base. Then the train: an elaborate work, inspired by a coal train she saw during Sydney’s 1979 train strikes, with multiple carriages carrying popcorn on a licorice track.
The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book, first published in 1980.
Three-quarters of the way through the book – which was conceived to collate the team’s most exciting creations – then-editor Ita Buttrose chose the train for the cover and Lee’s reputation was set as “Engineer Agnes”.
“Anything that requires a little bit more of assembling, people would point the finger at me and say, ‘it’s yours!’” Lee says.
So when Sinclair, “Mrs S”, walked in to the kitchen with a rubber ducky from her grandson’s bath, proposing the last cake for the book, they all turned to Lee.
“I was given a day and a bit to do a test run, and I did it almost on the first go,” she recalls.
“But do you know the story about the duck?” she adds, already laughing. “It got out of the bin!”
Agnes Lee had to rescue the discarded duck to get the final pic. Credit: Sam Mooy
A lesson from the best: embrace failure
This iconic cake wasn’t supposed to look like it does in the book, Lee says. The potato chip bill was planned, inspired by a trip to a milk bar. But the big red bow and buttons down the front? Not so much.
These were added at the last minute to hide a big crack down the front after the duck was swept in the bin. There was a miscommunication with the photographer about approvals for the image, Lee recalls, and she had to rescue the discarded duck to get the final pic.
It should be a comforting thought to parents, she adds: “even we can’t make it right!”
A recreation of the famous duck cake.Credit: Sam Mooy
Failure is at the heart of the Bluey episode too, with Bingo and Bluey’s dad Bandit – already stressed about having to make the “hardest” cake in the book – dropping the duck’s head on the kitchen floor. Bluey saves the day by helping him fashion a wonky head out of its neck.
This weekend’s pop-up cafe – one of many “immersive” Bluey events in recent years – will feature a recreation of that kitchen as well as the Heelers’ backyard, where families who have secured free tickets via a ballot can assemble duckling cupcakes.
Bandit salvages his headless duck cake on Bluey.Credit: BBC Studios
Lee heard of her cake’s TV debut only when her granddaughter introduced her to it. But she says the episode captured the magic of what makes these cakes great.
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“Often the joy is not from being successful,” she says. “The joy comes from the duck’s head coming off! The whole family [she says, speaking of the animated blue heelers] have so much laughter … It’s failure, but not failure. It’s about making memories.”
But if there’s one cake in the book you really don’t want your kids to pick? Agnes has some advice: “Glue the pages together.”
Tickets are now available for the Bluey Duck Cake Cafe at Bondi Westfield, open Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 October. Fans can sign up at bluey.tv/duck-cake-cafe.
