Swallows and Amazons cakes

Arthur Ransome was born on 18th January 1884.  News is coming in of the wonderful literary cakes being baked and decorated in his honour.

This summer, we made a ‘Swallows and Amazons’ seed cake with caraway seeds and almonds, which reminded me of being Peel Island in 1973.

Titty is eating seed cake when Man Friday turns up, looking rather like Virginia McKenna. Here are some made earlier:

Not so long ago, Miranda Gore Brown brought her version of Mrs Dixon’s traditional fruit cake to The Arthur Ransome Society pirate feast, along with her book Bake Me A Cake As Fast As You Can, which has ideas on how to ice cakes. She has ideas for baking here

Miranda made this cake for her son’s birthday, described here

A huge cake was baked to celebrate the launch of Julian Lovelock’s book ‘Swallows, Amazons and Coots‘ with a forward by Sophie Neville.

This cake celebrates Arthur Ransome’s book ‘Great Northern?’ set on the Isle of Lewis where filming took place for the DVD ‘Encountering the Ransomes’ released by The Arthur Ransome Society

Does  anyone have a recipe for Cook’s black cake? We would love to see your ideas for literary  decorations. Here are a few more to inspire you:

~Winner of The Susan Prize~

It was my privilege to award The Susan Prize to the girls who baked this cake. It proved they must have loved Arthur Ransome’s book ‘Winter Holiday’. The Swallows, Amazons and Ds are obviously contemplating whether or not to skate on the tarn that I understand was made by melting sweets and ‘took absolutely ages.’ You can see two of the characters approaching the ice.

Dorothea, the aspiring novelist, is skating around this cake, which tasted so delicious it almost transported me to the banks of the tarn itself.

~Winner of the Crumbly Creations~

A number of crumbly creations, using biscuits and chocolate, gave us a good idea of what the igloo in ‘Winter Holiday’ must have looked like, while this birthday cake was inspired by the Puffin cover of ‘Swallows and Amazons’.

Swallowy dodgers with slices of cake claimed by Amazon pirates were on offer at Lakeland Arts to accompany their Swallows and Amazons exhibition:

“There was an enormous gooseberry tart” recipe published in Signals:

Elizabeth Rondthaler Jolley sent this photo from America:

Adam Quinan has written from Canada: ‘I made this for an Arthur Ransome Birthday party event in Toronto back in January 2004. We went skating on an outdoor rink and ate Igloo hotpot and then came inside and listened to some storytellers retelling some of ‘Old Peter’s Russian Tales’ with the ‘Winter Holiday’ cake and tea.’

Author: Sophie Neville

Writer and charity fundraiser View all posts by Sophie Neville