Crack the door of an Australian freezer and it’s likely you’ll be greeted by the words “Sara Lee”. For decades, the company’s frozen baked desserts and ice-cream tubs have been a fixture in Australian kitchens, lying in cryogenic wait until called on for easily defrosted desserts.
That’s why this week, when Sara Lee went into voluntary administration for the second time, the nation’s freezers shed a collective, icy tear.
Stepping into the Australian market in 1971, having originated in Chicago in 1949 when a bakery owner named a creamy cheesecake after his daughter, the signature red boxes quickly became an indelible part of antipodean life, bringing a questionably authentic world of desserts directly into our homes through “Bavarian” chocolate pies and “French” strawberry cheesecakes.
Favourite Sara Lee cakes differ widely from family to family, as do memories of how often they were enjoyed. For some, a warmed Sara Lee apple pie was a Friday night staple, while others reserved a dense-yet-soft sticky date pudding for the most special of occasions.
“Chocolate Bavarian was the height of sophistication in our house,” remembered X user @sam_squiggle in response to a call for Sara Lee memories on social media. “It only came out when important events were held, like the annual Tupperware party.”
Others were less selective or patient with their indulgences; one respondent admitted to eating Sara Lee pound cake straight from the freezer (“it was like buttery ice-cream,”) while another crunched through mini apple pies without the inconvenience of waiting for them to defrost. Another remembers her mother ignoring the reheating instructions for the “simultaneously dense yet light” pound cake, enjoying it at its “cold and unadulterated” best.
Plenty of chefs, too, count themselves among the Sara Lee evangelists. Louis Couttoupes of Canberra’s Onzieme cites the classic blueberry pie with a scoop of Sara Lee vanilla ice-cream as his “go-to dessert as a kid”, while Nicholas Hill of Porcine suggests “eating the chocolate mud cake par-frozen for maximum enjoyment”.
The brand’s impact has also permeated a host of professional kitchens, like those of the award-winning gelato empire Gelato Messina. “Our boysenberry cheesecake is a homage to the Sara Lee frozen Strawberry Cheesecake,” admits Messina’s executive pastry chef, Tim Mitchell. “[It’s] intended to be eaten the same way too; taken from the freezer and impatiently eaten semi frozen.”
The Sydney-based pastry chef Andrew Bowden of Andy Bowdy Cakes, whose family ignored his pleas for a blueberry Danish in favour of the chocolate Bavarian, says his profession has given him the opportunity to right some wrongs.
“I’ve done my best to recreate it,” the chef admits, also counting the nostalgic sticky date pudding, and even the frustratingly prevalent chocolate Bavarian of his youth, among the desserts that have inspired his own creations. “Sara Lee is such an iconic part of my childhood and it’s a real bummer that they are no more. I feel like all my childhood food memories are all slowly vanishing.”
The pastry chef Lauren Eldridge points to the Sara Lee sticky date as the basis for her latest dessert at the historic Berowra Waters Inn, and joins many others in fondly remembering trips to the Sara Lee factory outlet in her youth. “We’d stop on the way home from visiting my grandmother when we were kids … it was so exciting.”
From sheet cakes shared at monthly classroom birthday celebrations to chocolate Bavarians single-handedly devoured after an all-night clubbing session, the cultural and culinary impact of this imported brand seems almost unmatched. And while voluntary administration is not an assured death knell – it’s not the first time Sara Lee has faced an uncertain future – one thing is certain: a freezer without one of those promise-filled red boxes will always feel a little empty.
