Meet the Royal Adelaide Show’s ‘Queen of Cakes’ Joy Middleton
It’s not a title the humble Joy Middleton would bestow upon herself, but few know more about the art of cake decorating – and maybe life – than this icon of the Royal Adelaide Show.
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You would swear the lilies were plucked straight from the vine. A closer inspection reveals petals meticulously crafted individually through a mix of gelatine, icing sugar and liquid glucose, and woven together carefully over many hours
The green stem and bulb soften in colour as they reach the top. Fine lacelike icing strips underpin three perfectly proportioned love hearts. It is all impressively lifelike ... and appealingly edible.
“It was a fruit cake so it smelt just as nice
as it looks,” says Joy Middleton, of the
wedding cake she designed specifically for son Matthew’s wedding.
Asked how long it took her to make, she pauses and, with a smile, says, “Oh, this one took quite a while.”
And then, “I just noticed this one has got a broken petal there.”
Joy opens another box, revealing two small posies of roses and carnations. Again, to the naked eye, completely authentic.
“With the carnations, you do make the whole flower all at once,” she explains.
“With the rose, you begin with what we call a starter and you let that get hard, and then you put the petals on piece by piece.”
Lightly touching said petals, Joy explains how they are crafted using specially made cutters. “When I first started there were very few cutters around, whereas now there are quite a lot of cutters,” she says.
“You can have an individual cutter for a daisy, you can have a cutter for a water lily, you can have one for a frangipani,” she says.
“When I started, my first frangipani cutter was made from a bottle top.”
Meet Joy Middleton, the Queen of Cakes at the Royal Adelaide Show.
It’s a title she would never bestow on herself, but her colleagues reckon it’s on the money.
An expert cake designer in her own right, Joy is the longest-serving steward for the show’s cake competitions, chalking up more than 30 years. She also is the convener of the cooking competitions, which include everything from muffins to jams and scones to chocolate crackles.
However, as we meet on this brisk morning in the secretary’s building at the Adelaide Showground, overlooking a freshly mown main arena which in a few a short weeks will be packed with people, rides and stalls, it’s cakes on the menu.
Joy reveals an envelope with some of her favourite creations. There’s the love heart wedding cake – another classic creation to mark her parents’ 60th wedding anniversary – and one for her niece’s 21st birthday, full of teddy bears.
All intricate. All unique.
She reckons she’s seen “literally thousands” of cakes over the years in her roles at the show, and has a fair idea of what makes a successful entry. So, what is the key to the perfectly designed cake?
Joy pauses, then explains ... First, you have to ensure the cake base is covered properly, and neatly. The cake then must be in proportion to the board. The colours must complement each other. After that the creativity and skill takes over. And patience.
“You can see the best ones; you know that they’ve put the time into it,” she says.
“They haven’t rushed it. It’s well crafted, it’s well balanced.
“I like cakes that are very precise. The current fashion, which I don’t like, is what
they call ‘naked’ cakes. To me they only look half done.”
Joy fell in love with cake decorating as a teenager. Two of her aunts excelled at the craft.
“One was more novelty stuff, the other one was more classical which, in those days, there was a lot of fine work on new cakes and she did lovely wedding cakes,” she says.
“I think I admired that and thought, “Gee, I’d like to do that one day’.”
From there, Joy designed her own 21st birthday cake. Then her own wedding cake. She became well known for the quality of her work but never spruiked it much.
“I never advertised – it was all word of mouth – but I did when my children were growing up,” she says. “I did quite well off cakes. In fact, a friend came into my house and said, ‘Your house always smells of fruitcake’.”
Joy became a member of the Cake Decorators’ Association of SA and found her way to helping at the Royal Adelaide Show.
“I became a steward because somebody within the show society, I think, knew one of their cake decorators, and said we need somebody who knows how to handle your decorated cakes because you do have to be very careful with them,” she says.
“And I put my hand up, along with a couple of other ladies, but there were only two of us that stuck at it.”
That was 1990, and a few years later she joined the cookery committee.
Joy will retire this year, but says the show will always be in her blood.
It was pigs, not piping, that first got herinvolved. Her parents, Angus and Gwyneth – better known as Gus and Gwen – ran a pig and dairy farm in Macclesfield, and would make the annual trek to the showgrounds to show off their swine.
From the late 1950s they would set up shop in “pig alley”, a row of corrugated iron sheds which stood between two main pig sheds either side of Leader St.
“And that’s where the pig exhibitors stayed during the show,” Joy says, adding that the area was consigned to history when the entrance was redeveloped (although her family would stay with friends nearby).
She proudly shows a certificate awarded to her parents for “the most successful exhibitor of livestock at the Royal Adelaide Show”.
Joy has fond memories of the time.
“I can remember coming to the show as quite a young child with my sister Christine, and we’d come down because we lived at Macclesfield and stayed with friends who lived nearby,” she says.
“We’d come in and we’d look at all the pigs.
“Mum used to have a bag that was called ‘the shopper’. Don’t ask me why it was called ‘the shopper’, but that’s where she’d put our lunch.
“And we’d sit roughly or near the pig sheds. And we’d all have lunch.
“And we were allowed to have one or two sample bags that were proper samples. I can remember a little jar of peanut paste and mustard in this little sausagey-shaped thing. There were true samples of food in the sample bags – this would have been the late ’50s.”
Her nephew, Greg Davis, is continuing the tradition and preparing to show the family’s pigs again this year. He says he’s been part of the family’s pig showing since primary school, but has taken over the reins in recent years following dad Jim’s retirement.
It’s been a challenging year on the land, with costs and grain prices increasing, but he’s hoping to enjoy at least a couple of free days at the showgrounds to see how his stock fares. They will be judged on everything from how they look to how they walk, in a competition which traditionally draws big crowds.
Greg is looking forward to the competition but also to enjoying the camaraderie among breeders.
“We only generally see each other once a year or so, so it’s a good time to catch up and see how everyone is going,” he says. “I’m not sure how we’ll go this year, though. I’ve got some good ones but I think the other guys will, too. The competition should be great.”
He’s honoured to be carrying on the legacy forged by his family over generations, saying it “fills me with a lot of pride” to know he will continue to carry the torch.
And while this is his Aunt Joy’s final year in an official capacity, it’s a pride she shares.
And she says the recognition the Royal Adelaide Show brings to our rural and regional communities should never be understated by “city folk”.
“It’s very important; it brings the country and city together,” Joy says.
“And, to a certain extent, I think a lot of people do forget about the country.
“And, well, without the country and our produce, where would we be? Just don’t give that a thought for a second.”
A bit like the Royal Adelaide Show without cakes, perhaps.
■First held in 1840, the Royal Adelaide show runs for nine days, from Saturday, September 2 until Sunday, September 10.
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