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.
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound
Watch the trailer here!
Copyright 2008-2016, Cake Wrecks. All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy
Endorsement Disclosure:
Purchases made through Amazon affiliate links on this blog yield a small referral fee. Go here for more details.
Reader Comments (87)
My favorite part is the man in the background - he thinks no one sees him as he stares in unbelief at the hat and struggles to hold back his laughter!
I know that it's traditional to celebrate the end of the war--and this was definitely a war to be glad to get to the end of, what with the destruction of millions at the hands of Hitler, but this is...yeah, this is tacky. But beautifully done!
So very non-PC.
wv: bomic (i kid you not)
This cake the bomb! This cake atomic! This cake bomic!!
I like how the ladies hat matches the cake.
This cake just makes me want to cry. How horrible!
And bikini was named so after an island were nuclear weapon was tested. It took a long time to understand killing hundred of thousand civilians is not an opportunity to party.
I discover cake wreck two days ago and couldn't stop myself from reading and laughing.
I went to sleep at 2 a.m.
See? Men don't need women to wage war; they just need women's help glorifying it.
I am not sure if that is really meant to be a mushroom cloud or just put together strangely. If it's the latter, it's ugly. If it's the former... it's in really bad taste and STILL ugly! In short, this cake has no reason to exist.
P.S. Lulubelle B, do you think it's possible that ypor computer is psychic? That WV thing is WAY too much of a coincidence for a post about an atomic bomb-shaped cake.
Amazing. Wonderful. And that lady's hat makes the image.
I am torn on this one...horrid hat, but so stylish for the times and my opinion is they should have been celebrating with a Mushroom Cloud Cake...after all, those 2 Atomic Bombs helped to end WWII !
Ahh Soh. You berry punny.
Amazing cake, I want one. And the hat to match is just too too cool.
Very informative: I didn't know Victor Borge was an officer in the military at the time.
It was a different time back then; if you click the "source" on the post, you'll see they were celebrating the successful testing of a bomb, not the actual bombing of peeps. Hindsight - sure it's in poor taste, but back then, not so much so. Back before people became so politically correct that you can't even sneeze without worrying about offending someone :p
1946. Too soon? WAY too soon. I certainly hope nobody made any cakes to celebrate any of Hitler's shenanigans.
It's sad isn't it? But then again, you're looking at the generation who thought smoking was good for calming the nerves...and seat belts....what are those?
How wise we all seem now in hindsight.
And I'm sure a large portion of the cake was cardboard, or possibly asbestos!
And people thought the 9/11 tribute cake was in bad taste...
wv - sebarow. What Patrick and Spongebob use when working in their yards.
WOW, um...inappropriate, much?
Happy A bomb day, Hiroshima! This one's on you...I mean, in your memory...I mean...ah, heck, just too awful to keep making jokes.
So did they screen the guests afterward for radiation poisoning?
Bikini Atoll was a testing ground--although some people were sickened and/or killed accidentally (collateral damage), as well as "experimental" animals brought there for the sake of observing the effects of the bombs on them.
The devastation of the bombs that effectively ended WWII were on a much *grander* scale, compared to this, and probably way more cake-worthy...unless you're the type who would be satisfied just to have a war end without celebrating all of the destruction with graphic bomb replicas. HOO-WAH.
What say we get on with our day and laugh and be silly again? This darn cake is too controversial.
Marji: it's Shakespeare (The Winter's Tale). But perhaps Wodehouse made an allusion to it somewhere, I don't know.
I thought you were joking about the names, but no, it's really Mr. and Mrs. Blandy.
wv: mangl, meaning to create poorly made cakes in the male form; see yesterday's wrecks for examples.
Gad.
Karen, I was thinking the very same thing about the French Revolution jewelry.
Unfortunately, back then Americans thought the Atomic Bomb was a good thing; a show of strength and power for the country. A way to protect themselves from advesaries. I don't think they had all the info or really knew the short and long-term outcome of their actions and the resulting consequences. (Nope, I'm not American). Or maybe not; I'm just sayin'.
Gotta say that hat is indeed a doozy. The cake..well, if it were indeed totally constructed outta cake, it would be awesome.
..aaaannd, if you look closely at the "surface" of the cake, it really looks like the surface of the ocean when a bomb is going KABLOOEY. It looks like a very good depiction of foamy, churned-up-by-a-bomb-detonation wavyness! The subject matter totally sucks, but it was well executed none-the-less. :)
Kind of makes me a little ill.
It is rather dreadful, but remember that the cake commemorated the testing on Bikini Atoll, not the bombing of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
I truly cannot imagine that ANYONE would have been crass enough to get a cake commemorating human destruction. I think they were merely going for a celebration of the successful conclusion of extensive work and testing.
I'm not saying it was appropriate, just that it might not be quite as bluntly cruel as people seem to think.
I've read the post and all the comments and still don't know if you're making that up or not. I'm going with making it up, because that a) gives you credit for being witty and b) doesn't require me to think about people actually celebrating atomic destruction.
the lady's hat also looks like a mushroom cloud.
at least in those days, you could express yourself in whatever way you wanted, without every special interest group in existence beating down your door, demanding apologies.i would almost welcome something offensive these days, it would be a breath of fresh air.
It feels wrong and I know I shouldn't be celebrating it, but this cake is completely incredibly awesome.
Nick
(flavourfiasco.blogspot.com)
*laughs* that's awesome. I wonder how it is constructed and whether the cloud part is edible or only the base...
That said, political correctness and taboos are not a good thing. We need to remember what nuclear weapons do, and this is a fun way to do it.
Besides, you don't necessarily need a nuclear bomb to make a mushroom coud, it's all about the heat in the explosion ;) It's a physics lesson too!
"We need to remember what nuclear weapons do, and this is a fun way to do it"!? What nuclear weapons do, as in, destroy countless lives? Call me overly PC, but I have a hard time seeing the fun in that.
This is even better than the diaper cake for baby showers.
I meant, if it sparks a discussion, all the better.
And I am a pacifist. In my home area in Germany, they are digging up 50kg bombs until today!
I don't wish war or destruction on anyone.sometimes, a cake is just a cake.
Fantastic execution of the cake, to celebrate a fantastic advance in technology. Harnessing nuclear energy, for any means, is an engineering achievement, and this cake celebrated the successful test of a very complicated machine whose production required an entire industry to be invented.
War is hell, but ending wars quickly is better than the alternative. The concept of mutually assured destruction changed the course of history.
Incidentally, Admiral Blandy was quite the controversial figure at the time. Here's a memorable quote in which he addresses some phenomenally ignorant criticisms, the likes of which are still leveled against basic research today:
"The bomb will not start a chain-reaction in the water converting it all to gas and letting all the ships on all the oceans drop down to the bottom. It will not blow out the bottom of the sea and let all the water run down the hole. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy, as one of my critics labeled me, exploding these bombs to satisfy my personal whim."
This wreck specifically commemorates the Crossroads Baker test of July 25, 1946. Morbidity and hat hilarity aside, the cake is actually a pretty good representation of the Baker mushroom cloud http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x36wV81B8qA" rel="nofollow">shortly after detonation.
That is disgusting. How can they celebrate the murder of thousands of innocent people? They didn't include ash bodies or people suffering from radiation sickness or horrible injuries, did they? That is just disgusting.
How, as a country, can you top killing so many civilians at once as a horrible act? Easy, make excuses (or let Pearl Harbor get attacked,) then be as offensive and tasteless as possible about it afterwards. Stereotypes and using people with radiation as medical guinea pigs helps too. And then when you're done we can all have (white) cake.
Essentially this is why I roll my eyes at America's 9/11 obsession. The reason it was "the next pearl harbor" is because we're literally so spoiled as a country, that those two incidents are the closest we've been to a military occupation/invasion in like, what, 200+ years? It's no London bombing or Battle of Red Square, I'm just saying...