No, it's not cheating. To the contrary, it's completely consistent with the basic premise of Creation itself, i.e., God creates a "finished product", such as Adam, for example.
Adam's body, created instantly, had "the correct initial conditions to make it look [tens] of years old". Adam had the appearance of an embryo that grew to a fetus, that grew to an infant, that grew to a child, that grew to an adolescent, that grew to an adult -- but, none of those stages earlier than the final adult condition occurred.
Creation is inherently the act of producing something with the appearance of having undergone a lengthy process, without it actually undergoing that process. To argue otherwise would be to argue that at most, God created "raw materials". Once one acknowledges Divine Creation of any entitity (world, solar system, human being, etc.), one acknowledges that God has created a finished product that has the appearance of something that had been around for a while. (Take a snapshot of the Solar System one microsecond after it's created. Plot the trajectories of the planets, then take the known data, and "run it backwards", and see what you get. What you'll get are tables of where each planet would have been at various points in time before they existed!)
"Cheating"? Harumph!
I submit to you that the conditions under which such a backpropagation is possible is mathematically equivalent to its having existed for that time. If God "created the universe" five seconds ago, it does not change the fact that I have existed, from my point of view, for much longer than that.
Also, if God created a "finished product," why is the universe constantly changing? The universe as a whole is expanding; the geology of the earth is changing; comets that existed for millions of years crash into Jupiter; quickly reproducing species like insects, bacteria, and viruses evolve within recorded human history; etc. The answer is that God created a wonderfully dynamic and complex universe that defies a simple explanation. The most compact yet complete description of the universe is the universe itself.
Yet another thought to ponder: It is impossible to assign a unique instant of time to points that are separated by space. Therefore, the only possible unique instant of time that God could have created the universe was the instant of the big bang when there was only one point in space.