Recipe: Cricket Pitch Tart by Gareth Whitton of Tarts Anon

This story appears in our July 2025 Nostalgia issue, presented by Up, where we asked 13 professional bakers to recreate cakes from the iconic The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book.

Ingredients

Shortcrust pastry

250g plain flour
125g unsalted butter cut into small cubes
3g salt
65ml cold water

Salted caramel

1 can sweetened condensed milk
Sea salt

Vanilla custard

370g cream
50g double cream
70g cream cheese
130g brown sugar
10g vanilla paste (or vanilla pod)
200g egg yolks (about 11 large eggs, separated)

Decorations

500g milk chocolate
50g white chocolate
50g cocoa butter
Red food colouring
White food colouring
Yellow food colouring
Black food colouring
Pistachio meal (available in specialty and health food stores, and Indian grocers)
1 pack chocolate finger biscuits

Method

Place the flour, butter and salt into a mixing bowl or in a stand mixer with the paddle attached. Mix on a slow speed until the ingredients start to resemble coarse golden breadcrumbs, then add the water slowly. Continue to mix until it starts to come together then knead briefly until a soft yet homogenous dough is formed.

Wrap the dough in cling film and allow it to rest in the fridge for a few hours.

Place the pastry between two pieces of baking paper, then use a rolling pin to roll out the pastry to a 30cm circle, approximately 3mm thick.

Drape this pastry over the top of a 25cm quiche tin and press the edges in, ensuring the corners are nice and defined. Avoid stretching the pastry as much as possible.

Place in the freezer for 25 minutes then, once frozen, place a piece of aluminium foil on top of the dough and press it into the sides. Fill it up with rice, beans, lentils or similar.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Place pastry in for 40 minutes and bake until golden brown. Check underneath the rice and foil to ensure it is cooked through, and continue to cook until it is golden all over.

Allow to cool down with the rice still inside the pastry.

Meanwhile, place a can of sweetened condensed milk (with the label removed) into a pot of water and boil for approximately 4 to 5 hours. Ensure the water is always topped up and is simmering, then allow to cool.

Once cold, remove the caramel filling from inside the can and mix in a pinch of sea salt.

Place 250g of the caramel inside the shortcrust pastry shell and use a pallet knife to spread over the base of the shell. Set the rest aside in a piping bag.

Next, place the creams, cream cheese, sugar and vanilla into a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Once it has boiled, pour a small amount over the egg yolks, and whisk together.

Add this mixture back into the saucepan off the heat, and then whisk to combine. (At this point, you can blend the mix with a stick blender to ensure it is super smooth and creamy, but is not 100 per cent necessary.)

Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and use a ladle to skim the bubbles off the top.

Set the oven to 125°C fan-forced, or 130°C if not. Place your cooked tart shell inside, then pour the custard into the shell while it’s inside the oven. Gently push it into the centre of the rack, then bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until the centre has a very slight jiggle.

Melt the milk chocolate in a plastic bowl in the microwave for one minute. Remove, then stir.

Continue to heat and stir until fully melted, then allow to cool. Continue to stir as the chocolate cools, and if you have a digital thermometer, check that the temperature reads 27°C. (If not, just check the temperature with your finger – you want it to be pretty cool without being too thick and starting to set.) This is part of the tempering process to ensure it remains solid and stable at room temperature.

Next, put it back in the microwave for five-second bursts until the chocolate is up to 30°C. Aim for this temp when you're pouring into trays.

You will need two trays, one to make a thick (15mm) sheet of chocolate and one to make a thin (3mm) sheet of chocolate. Line the trays with baking paper or acetate sheets if you have them.

For the thick tray, pour the chocolate and fill it until it is approximately 15mm thick, then allow to set. Use a very sharp and hot knife to cut out the cricket bat shape. Also cut out a circle that you can mould in your hands into a spherical shape for the ball. Once you are happy with your shapes, set them aside.

For the thin tray, pour the chocolate but ensure that it is only a few millimetres thick, then allow it to set until the surface is just dry enough to touch without sticking to your fingers. Cut a large rectangle for the cricket pitch base, then cut out sticks for the stumps and bails.

Melt together the white chocolate and cocoa butter until fully liquid, then divide into a few smaller bowls and add food colouring to each. Make one bowl sandy-coloured for your stumps, pitch and the stitching in the ball; a red bowl for the ball; and a black bowl for your cricket bat handle.

Take a small paintbrush and paint the different parts of your cricket pitch the corresponding colours. Allow them to dry on a tray lined with baking paper, then take a clean brush and draw the crease marks on the pitch with white food colouring.

Once the tart itself is cool, place pistachio meal into a sieve and dust over the top to give the appearance of grass.

Place your pitch in the centre of the tart, then take your bag of salted caramel from earlier and pipe tiny dots on the areas where you wish to place your stumps. Stick the stumps into the pitch, then repeat the process on the top of the stumps to fix the bails.

Pipe a small amount of the same caramel to the bottom of the ball to stop it from rolling and place it on the pitch. Put the same amount of caramel on the areas where the bat will be touching the stumps and pitch, then secure your bat.

Sprinkle a little excess pistachio meal around the edge of the pitch for a more realistic effect.

Take your packet of chocolate finger biscuits and cut each one in half. Pipe a small amount of salted caramel onto the flat side of each one and stick it to the outside of the tart pastry. Repeat this process until the whole exterior of the tart is full and covered with the
biscuits, mimicking a picket fence.

The cricket pitch cake recipe first appeared in the The Australian Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book, published in 1980.