Botched Balloons
April 1, 2009 When it comes to cake decorating, you can't get any more basic than the balloon. One roundish blob of icing, a string, and voila! You're done! This staple of icing decor is so simple that even the most inexperienced of decorators couldn't possibly Wreck it up.
[pause]
BWAHAHAHAH! Hah, did you see what I did there? How I managed to keep a straight face? Hoo boy! [wiping eyes] Heehee!
Ok, seriously, let's count down the ways in which Wreckerators have managed to destroy the seemingly simple balloon, shall we?
1) Gravity Need Not Apply
I suppose you could say the writing is what's upside down, but even then those balloons look more like wrinkly piles of fresh paint than anything else. Yech.
2) Floaters, or Swimmers?
I see this problem a lot, and I don't think it's just 'cuz I have that V-day post on the brain.
It doesn't help when the "balloons" are swimming in a circle, either:
This balloon placement makes perfect sense...during tornado season.
This is no doubt a commentary on the vast, off-centered, blankness of life.4) Too big.
These behemoths are coming in for the kill with their teensy dagger strings.
Multicolored swirls look, at best, like lollipops. At worst, we're facing the Teletubby poo debacle all over again.
6) "You may use any icing color in the kitchen. EXCEPT THIS ONE."
Ooh, could those be a gaggle of failing organs*, or perhaps hacky sacks made from old pantyhose? Here's hoping!!
Janice L., Nezuko, Troy K., Helen D., Jessica G., & Bex, thanks for taking us up, up and away.
* Geese, organs - they're practically interchangeable, right?
Reader Comments (86)
Those are some colorful sperm.
Wow, who knew they could make them so badly?! I certainly see some swimmers there, but I wondered if the teletubbie poo wasn't supposed to be flowers, and the decorator just couldn't make a rose?
oh.my.goodness. that is hilarious.
Oh wow...never would have thought balloons to be so difficult...
Those tiny balloons in the big, blank cake look terrified.
Maybe #4 is depicting hot air balloons?? Oh well, maybe not.
I think your post has now shown that Frosting Balloons are an automatic Cake Wreck. Love your blog!
Love the "too small" ones... and the final pic? Looks like quite the fearless colon to me.
Oh, ugh. Band-Aid colored frosting is never a good thing.
Angie (from over at www.HalfAssedKitchen.com)
I will NEVER ask for balloons on a cake again!
The bottom one is just gross. Is the marketing department coming up with something new here - flesh balloons? Fleshloons? "Got an artery that's all clogged up? No problem, let us inflate our new Fleshloons up in there and you'll be good as new."
Me thinkst that last one probably started out with bright pink balloons on it...but was left under the dreaded flourescent lights a bit too long!
I haven't commented in ages, but those, 'Too small' balloons just about sums up my life...
It's all sooo tragic!
Thanks for making me smile like a... well like a loon.
Everything is dirty... Balloons are dirty.
Chris got pretty colored balloons on his/her 28th birthday cake . Oooooooh Goody for him/her!!!! (clapping hands with fingers spread wide open) :D
Oh, BLECH! Proving the ancient adage (forgive me Mr, Burns) that the simplest things "gang aft awry".
More Spongemonkeys!!! {8^P
Number 6 is clearly for the veterinary associations "Say no to heartworms" awareness month. Having had the *privilege* of seeing a pickled heart with a bad case of heartworms I can tell you with certainty that it looks quite like that.
I also love the too small balloons...maybe it was a minimalist birthday cake. I was going to say nihilist but then there'd be no balloons at all....and possibly no cake.
AHAHAHA! Thanks, I needed that! Failing organs...
Ugh, the blobs on #4 make me ill, thinking about trying to actually eat a mound of frosting that big. Perhaps the dagger-like projections are meant to drill their way through your lower intestine, cleaning out all the debris.
After seeing all the ways to flub up balloons, I don't think I'll ever attempt them myself.
Number 4 is clearly a hermit-crab themed birthday party...
I love it: Balloon 101
these look so deflated. sat upon.
squished.
#3 reminds me of my brother-in-law's stories of balloons released at funerals....
Chris got 29 pretty colored balloons on his/her/its 28th birthday cake. D'oh!
Ok, I can just about let the swirly balloons in #5 pass. I mean, compared to the others, it's a decently made cake with just the problem of the swirls (and peaks I guess). But what were they thinking with the small balloons. I mean, you know the cake is SOOO big, why make the baloons sooo small? Were they waiting for something else?
Ugh, maybe it's just because I've got swimmers on the brain, but that last one looks like piles of severed testicles.
You know there's a problem when balloons start looking like sperm...
Diminutive, meek
Balloons on the troposphere
Of cake, wafting lone.
Geese? Organs?
Alright! Who put the fois gras on this cake?
First time I have LOLed IRL from reading a blog in AGES. Oh man.
I think the tiny balloons were made to use up the very last little bit of colored frosting. Or maybe, they were very, very far away.
I love the swimmers, and might want swimmers on my cake some day. Frosting swimmers that is.
The last cake looks like it is supposed to be swimmer storage tanks to me. (umm, mountain oysters if I wasn't obvious enough.)
I knew the moment I saw the title that there would be sperm involved. You didn't disappoint.
Almond bark lollipops
Sperm
Sperm
Sperm
Horseshoe crabs
cow pies from crayola eating mini cows
the return of the pig butts from Nah, These Won't Traumatize The Kids At All
The sad thing is....I just ordered a cake for my son's party with balloons on it.... :( now I'm scared...
ha ha ha ha. You crack me up! And yes, they definitely look like little swimmers, I don't think it's just because of the v-day post!
I thought the "2 ans" French phallic balloons were the best but the wee balloons in the center of the large cake are quickyl becoming number 2.
Maybe the falling balloons are on a celestial body with high gravity and/or low air pressure.
WVOTD: pixelu = Japanese term for pixels.
3) This one really cracks me up. For the right person, I think this could be a funny cake. It would go well with an appropriate quote from The Office: "It is your birthday." Actually, I'm kind of liking that.
6) Calf nuts.
~kate
I used to be a cake decorator and I think I did a pretty good job of it. I just worked in a grocery store bakery but people used to ask for me by name when ordering cakes so I like to think I didn't suck at it. One thing I could never get down though was fricken-fracken balloons. No matter what I did they never turned out right. I would cringe whenever someone would order a balloon cake because I knew it meant they were going to walk out of that bakery with a sperm cake. It's my secret shame. And now not so secret.
I don't know about failing organs...they look more like lopsided butts to me!
HACKY SACKS!!!!!!! HAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!!
(breathing in)
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!
#3 made me laugh out loud!
Ew, the colour and shape of the balloons on the bottom one made me think of.....um.....well, generally hey usually ARE found close to the bottom.....
The last one is definitely testicles. I find that gel balloons generally work better than frosting ones although there can still be sperm problems with those too.
wv:makin-with all these sperm cakes, there might be some baby-makin!
Ewww! The last one looks like the decorator put on two hemmerroid "arrangements" (using the term loosely). Sorry, but cake and hemmies? Yack!!!
:D:D:D i *love* the white cake with the microscopic balloons :D:D:D!! no one could possibly _not_ blink when they see it, i don't think...
The one that says "To Andrea" doesn't look that bad to me. They look more like Hot Air Balloons than regular balloons. You just have to use your imagination!
Um, April Fools?
Please?
You mean these arn't the result of some April Fools Day prank? Not even the last one?
*hangs head in mourning for all the cake decorators of the world*
oh yeah, i get geese and organs mixed up all the time
and i'm a surgeon
(in my nightmares)
There is no such thing as a too-large lump of frosting.
mmmm.... frosting....
ha! I actually like the tiny ones! I do have to admit they'd be better if they were in the center though.