A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.
Now, don't you have a photo you want to send me? ;)
March 6, 2009 Back when the atomic bomb first "hit" the international scene, it became fashionable to not only wear nuclear-explosion-styled hats, but also to serve cakes in the shape of that oh-so-appetizing mushroom cloud:
Shaun, you da bomb.
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Reader Comments (87)
And here I always thought mushrooms were low fat and good for you!!
ROFL...love the hat!
You can just tell by the look on the Admiral's face that he's more embarrassed by his wife's hat than the atomic cake.
No way. Hahaha :)
You forgot "We'll meet again" by Vera Lynn! :)
[Tribute to Dr. Strangelove]
Oh my, I think I'd be afraid to eat that thing.
I dunno...it looks less mushroom cloud and more mushroom. Maybe this was part of an international fungus convention.
But just think of what an awesome Wilton cake pan this would be...right next to the teddy bear and Dora the Explorer - the mushroom cloud. Having lived and worked in Los Alamos I can definitely say it'd sell well at the museum gift shop.
Well, that cake is tacky. I bet it tastes like ash.
Angie (from over at www.HalfAssedKitchen.com)
I hope I'm only so lucky at my wedding... what a beautiful metaphor: an explosion of love!
...
Is this disturbing or hilarious? I'm not sure...
On a tangent, that's a crazy cantilever effect on the cloud part. That's some serious cake engineering. It's like Frank Lloyd Wright, a cake decorator, and Oppenheimer collaborated. (I bet it had some kind of frame inside, tho...)
Hmmmm, can you say inappropriate.
Wow! Is it just me or does it look like the cake is covered with teddy bear stuffing? I can't get over the poofiness of it. Cakes should not be poofy.
Are we sure that's not her hair???
Oh, my! I think I'd be afraid to get radiation poisoning from the cloud!
Oh, no they didn't!?? There better not be any Holocaust cakes.
Wow, I can't think of a better way to celebrate the agonising deaths of countless people than with fondant, icing and sponge. Awful.
That's oh so wildly inappropriate. But the hat kind of makes it OK.
That's terrible! lol
I got all excited thinking they had placed white mushroom on the greenery around the base of the cake. Then I clicked to "blow up"
(little atomic humor there) the picture and it just looks like carnations. Rats.
As a hat person, I totally vote for that hat.
Things that make you go...hmmm or more like BOOOM!!
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DB
That is just plain weird.
As a bit of a student on the subject, the atomic bomb didn't quite carry the stigma back then that it does today. Although I've not seen this cake until now, I did know it existed. An admirable representation, to say the least.
I'm a first time poster but I've been following your blog for a little while. The first blog I go to every day!
Wow, not a joke. But hilarious!
The hat almost matches the cake. :)
That cake is bad taste in more ways than one.
--Blue Jean
how terribly self-satisfied of the Yanks to make a cake out of the suffering of millions. *How* they must have laughed at the time.
I suspect its not all cake. Maybe a large cardboard tube with a round cake board on top, decorated over.
No...they oughtn't to have gone there. It's a symbol of destruction, loss of human life, civilian casualties, the monster of scientific progress. One had as well make a 9/11 cake or an Auschwitz cake.
I wish I could go back in time and say "dude...too soon!"
"sipped Molotov cocktails"
LOL!
Wow! How... incredibly... TACKY. You've posted some pretty inappropriate wrecks on here before, but this on takes the cake! (pun intended of course) LOL
Shame. Why would you celebrate a mass killing?
Lol at Tracy's comment.
WV - iriptuai - is that "eruption" in some other language perchance?
Oh my gosh you guys, it's not really a mushroom cloud cake Jen was just making a joke that it LOOKS like one. Back then it was "fashionable to make a cake with a half dome on top at the time. Much more "chic" than the usual flat topped round or square teired cake.
C'mon...by now you should be able to tell when Jen is being facetious. If not here's a clue....her fingers are on the keyboard ;D
WV: Shesse- appropriate LOL Sheesh!
Geeze, what an accomplishment that was, huh?
The testing, I mean...
SO much radiation, so many studies in how to treat deadly radiation poisoning--and so much learned about how very, very long it takes for an area to be considered decontaminated (Bikini Atoll is STILL contaminated).
Oh, well. That was then, and they were excited about the whole thing. Besides--cake is cake is cake IS cake!
I guess...>^xx^<
Maybe the cake just exploded in the oven and they didn't have time to make another one, so they were forced to compromise and decorate it that way...
Or how about "You Dropped A Bomb on Me"?
What, the cake shaped like terrified children running naked from a napalm blast was considered too tasteful?
Oh that is so sad.
Wouldn't it be appropriate if the cake were mostly whipped cream?
Ignorance reigned supreme...And so to celebrate here is to your suffering! cheers! it's no wonder most countries hate americans.
***but you still gotta love that hat***
Oh, that's appalling.
This just shows that poor taste, when it comes to cakes, is nothing new.
are you sure it's not just a cracking replica of her hat? you know, that's slightly more tasteful...
Wow. That's fascinatingly morbid. It's like the guillotine jewelry that was fashionable during the French Revolution.
Which came first: the hate or the cake?
Yep, these people are pretty damn weird and sick in their celebration of the death hundreds of thousands of people.
No words. Speechless.
How did they keep the thing from collapsing on itself?
Yikes. What an bizarre and inappropriate subject for a cake, and I did a quick search.
According to one item that I read in a letter from an old Time issue online:
"As published [photo of party and cake]... it did a great injustice to Admirals Blandy and Lowry, who have been tireless in their efforts to tell the citizens of the world of the devastating power and insidious poison of the atomic bomb. . . .
"Admiral and Mrs. Blandy and Admiral Lowry were not the hosts but were the guests of honor at a party given by Officers of the Crossroads staff. They had no part in the planning or procurement of the cake."
I don't know anything about Blandy or Lowry, but I would like to think that's true.
Since this was a US Navy endeavor, this cake was probably at a celebration for successful completion of nuclear testing on Bimini Island in the Pacific. For what it is worth, of the Armed Forces, the Navy always has the best food. It was a different time back then. As children, we would always go to the shoe department to get our feet fluoroscoped so we could see the bones of our feet.
The mushroom cap almost looks like a large pie, covered in meringue.
exit, pursued by a bear got it exactly right. Do I detect Wodehouse in his screen name?
I agree, terribly self satisfied of us. Disgusting. They should have little burned bodies all around it made out of black licorice. Chew on that.
I wonder if you look closely you can see tiny people being vaporized. It looks white... no roiling ball of orange and black and red. It's a kinder, gentler atomic explosion.