Recipe: Pidapipo’s Koala Birthday Cake

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.

At Pidapipo we never use artificial colourants or dyes, so we replaced the chocolate Vienna cream in the original recipe with whipped cream tinted with organic activated charcoal – the perfect ingredient to give our koala its grey colour.

We also created a bespoke macadamia gelato for this recipe, as a nod to the Australiana theme. You could use any milk-based gelato (fior di latte, vanilla, chocolate). Just not sorbet or sorbetto, as they’re too watery.

Ingredients

3 house-made vanilla butter sponge cakes: 2 round and 1 square, as per original instructions
500ml whipped cream
Organic activated charcoal
1 cup desiccated coconut
1 large house-made dark chocolate cookie nose, plus 2 smaller ones for eyes
Dark chocolate shards for claws
500ml Pidapipo macadamia gelato

Method

Cut and assemble koala as per the Women’s Weekly book. Then cut each cake element (head, body, ears) in half horizontally. You’ll end up with a bottom layer and a top layer of sponge.

Transfer the macadamia gelato into a piping bag and pipe onto the bottom layer: start at the edge of the sponge and slowly move towards the centre. (The gelato should be soft enough to pipe, but it does not need to be defrosted beforehand. Simply scoop into piping bag then use the warmth and pressure of your hands to pipe it out.)

Once the macadamia gelato layer is complete, carefully place the remaining sponge layer on top.

Freeze the cake for 1 hour, allowing the gelato to set.

Apply a coating of organic activated charcoal whipped cream to “mask” the cake – this creates a smooth flat surface for your decorative piping.

Press desiccated coconut on centre of ears and front of body.

Transfer remaining whipped cream into a piping bag with a 10mm plain nozzle and pipe the edges and surface of the cake (you could also use uncoloured whipped cream for the tummy and the inner ears).

Press on dark chocolate cookies to represent eyes and nose. Use the serrated edge of a knife to “stamp” dark chocolate shards, applying these to represent claws.

Sprinkle desiccated coconut over the edge of the ears and over the top of the eyes to create a fluffy look.

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