Australia's First Cake Picnic Draws 1,600 Sweet Creations to Melbourne
Melbourne's self-proclaimed queen of cakes, Alice Bennett, also known as Miss Trixie Drinks Tea, served as an assistant judge at Australia's inaugural Cake Picnic. The global phenomenon descended on Kings Domain in Melbourne last Saturday, featuring 1,600 artfully presented cakes that were happily devoured as part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.
A Global Phenomenon Comes to Australia
Created in San Francisco in 2024 by amateur baking enthusiast Elisa Sunga, the first Cake Picnic began as a way for the Californian to enjoy more cake than she could bake herself. The event has since toured nine cities worldwide and will visit Sydney on Saturday, March 28. In the years since its inception, unrelated mass cake swapping events have also emerged across Australia.
The concept follows a simple pot-luck principle: participants bring an offering and share the spoils. While there's technically a winner, Cake Picnic emphasizes community over competition, focusing on what Sunga calls "cakenomic redistribution" on a grand scale. The event operates under one fundamental rule: no cake, no entry.
A Day of Sweet Celebration
As proceedings commenced at 11 a.m., a sea of gingham skirts and boldly patterned frocks billowed across the grass toward a marquee. Pink-shirted Melbourne Food and Wine Festival staff worked to maintain order as attendees were directed to designated drop-off zones. Hundreds of meters of trestle tables, draped in starched white cloth, displayed the culinary creations.
Bennett arrived with high expectations, stating, "I'm aiming for 1,000, but I'll be sad if I don't get to taste at least 50." The event attracted participants from across the country, including Polly Stokes and her 10-year-old daughter Milly, who traveled over 600 kilometers from Canberra.
Stokes prepared a tried-and-true chocolate raspberry cake, while Milly embarked on an ambitious chocolate rainbow marshmallow creation. "We're here for the fun of it," Stokes explained. "This is such a beautiful, relaxed environment, and everyone has put in such effort!"
Beyond Special Occasions
Sunga, a staunch advocate for cake enjoyment beyond special occasions, questioned why cake should be reserved only for birthdays and weddings. "Why not cake on a random Saturday in March too?" she asked. Friends Sarah Grinzi and Hannah Millicer, who have known each other for three decades, echoed this sentiment.
Millicer described baking for the Cake Picnic as "a radical act of self-care" rather than an obligation. Her chocolate fudge cake with blueberry jam and Swiss meringue buttercream, infused with freeze-dried blueberries, cost nearly $150 to make, with $28 spent on butter alone.
The Sweet Aftermath
With minimal fanfare, a best-in-show cake decorated like a tin of anchovies and two runners-up were announced. Attendees, armed with family-sized pizza boxes, then began sampling the creations without slice limits or formal queuing. Remarkably, the event proceeded peacefully with no conflicts over the abundant buttercream offerings.
By day's end, Sunga declared herself on "a sugar dream cake high," calling the event "absolutely spectacular on all levels and degrees." The Melbourne gathering pushed the all-time number of Cake Picnic cakes past 10,000, though Sunga has stopped counting her personal samples.
While chocolate cakes typically rank as her favorite, Sunga found herself particularly taken with an Australian specialty: the potato chip-billed duck cake from the Australian Women's Weekly. Initially unsettled by the creation, she later appreciated its story, remarking, "Awww, that is so precious."
The event showcased everything from towering tiered cakes to intricately decorated masterpieces, with at least one literal tonne of cake served. Sunga marveled at the collective effort, noting, "Just think of how many ovens in Melbourne were being used. Of how much sugar, butter, flour was being used up in all these kitchens all around the city."
