Cake After People
December 30, 2010 What would happen if every baker on earth...[dramatic voice]...disappeared?
This isn't the story of how they might vanish. It's what happens to the cakes they leave behind. This is just part of the journey that will take us to the future of once active bakeries, as well as haunting sites already devoid of taste. Welcome to earth, population: zero.
An abandoned ring and silk flowers bear mute witness to the echoing loneliness...of desolation.
In the depths of bakery windows everywhere, dust gathers. Icing crumbles. With no workers here to clean, once-sweet treats become deadly harbingers of disease.
Sun-bleached displays now resemble so much worn, waxy marble, making it impossible to distinguish what once was a timeless tasty treat.
Uh. Lot of alliteration in this half of the script, huh?
Sound guy: Alliter what now?
Never mind.
Geothermal flash floods bring with them river rock and debris. Amazingly, the petrified pastries persevere.Seriously? "Petrified pastries persevere?" Who wrote this?
sound guy: I think it was the new guy; he had to finish up when Jerry took leave. Look, just go with it; we're on a roll.
[sigh] Fine.
In dank, darkened displays, filthy, festering folds of fondant mask the moldering malformed mess, made more malignantly misshapen in much...[throwing script down] Oh come on!!
sound guy: What?
I'm ad-libbing from here. Deal with it.
Fine. Let's wrap this up.
Come and get it!!
sound guy: Seriously?
Seriously.
Reader Comments (94)
Clearly, movies and video games need more scenes that take place in post-apocalyptic bakeries.
Oh.My.Word.
how do these places pass Health and Safety or Food Hygienes regulations?!
Those dust bunnies are an extra nutritional bonus!
But, eeewwww...how do they not notice the dust!
Eww, but still, I have not been put off cake. I've been reading your blog for ages now, and just wanted to say I think its amazing and you're a really great writer! I cannot believe how many bad cakes there are out there, wow.
Morning Jen. Happy Holidays!
"filthy, festering folds of fondant"
LOL love it!
Ohhh a twinkie cake. How, erm...cute? lol
Love this post!
I can kind of get into the twinkie castle.
Wow, that's a lot of alliteration there. I'm impressed :)
and you're right, those twinkies will live on forever and ever. That's why I advocate eating them; we'll have so much of the chemicals in us that we'll live forever, just like they do.
I Love the reference to the 10,000 year old Twinkies! :D
LOL! My hubby & I just watched "Life After People" last week. This is pretty much the cake version. Nice!
I kind of love the Twinkie cake.
I think the second picture is of Miss Havisham's wedding cake from "Great Expectations."
With the exception of the Twinkie cake, they all appear to be from non-US bakeries (and the two with river rock from the same bakery). However, it is a good lesson for all of us who work and/or own businesses to look though the eyes of a potential customer. Would someone want to come into our business? Would they want to buy our products as displayed? Would they want to hurl looking at them? Time to vacuum and dust, people.
This post is hilarious! I can't imagine anyone in his/her right mind actually eating anything coming from a bakery that had a display like this... except for the Twinkie cake. Those would be popular where I come from.
You could also add alongside the picture of the twinkie cake, the picture of the cheeto "cake" made to celebrate the male life being given by a coworker of mine. She pretty much lives on artificial cheese whether found in frozen mac 'n cheese or cheetos, so the gathering of cheetos into tiers and putting ribbon on to make look like a cake alongside the dish of homemade mac 'n cheese was probably her idea of heaven. The rest of us just hoped she thought we were laughing with her.
Having been a big fan of "Life after People," I applaud your references!
But the cakes?! Holy Health Inspector, Batman, WHY ARE THESE PLACES IN BUSINESS?!
I totally want to make a cake out of Twinkies! In fact, I think I'm going to recommend it as a wedding cake option for the next friends who get married. That way they will still have viable cake to eat on their anniversaries for the rest of their natural lives!
I don't understand the cakes on window screens surrounded by river rocks. Is this a cake preparation technique? Some new misguided decorating theme? A failed method of cake preservation?
Oh my, I was just watching Life After People last nigt. I can't believe they missed covering this important - and terrifying - subject! :)
Best laugh today!
What's the deal with displaying cakes with rocks?
Is it my imagination or do the first and third cakes appear to be from the same bakery? And the fourth and fifth cakes seem to be from the same bakery. So hopefully there are only 3 bakeries involved in these sad disasters.
WV: bectann: a new medicine devised for people who eat cakes that have been around for a little too long.
I don't care what anybody says, I'm ordering that Twinkie cake for my next birthday!
(Love today's theme, btw. You are still cracking me up!)
Say, is that the Queen in the corner of cake #3?
I love the Twinkie one!!! It's actually kinda cute! I mean it's not a great master piece for Sunday Sweets or anything but it's original and well done. Cute!
Who's in the mood for zombie cakes now?
It can't be just me, right?
The sad thing is, that if there were no other cakes around, I'd eat these.
You know, weddings are all about symbolism, and I can't think of anything that might represent the eternal love and commitment of a newlywed couple than a Twinkie Cake!
And darn cute, too! So wrong and so right all at the same time....I am dumbfounded....
Another hilarious post - and I'm delighted to finally not be the only person I know who's been morbidly fascinated with the Life After People series! I mean, really, what's the deal with that show - are we talking about the Rapture or something? From the start of the first episode, we see land-line phones dangling from their cords and food still sizzling on the stove in mid-preparation, but the people are just... abruptly... gone... leaving no messy corpses behind to clutter things up. Weird. Still, it seems like I just can't... stop... watching...
8-/
WV: "seigall"
I don't know about you, but I "seigall", and a lot of it, in the attitudes of these bakery owners toward the upkeep of their displays!
Wait, there are TWO cakes with the words worn off and rocks around them? WHY??
Haha! Twinkies last FOREVAH! Long reign preservatives...not. :D LOL Great post!
Hmmm... If humans go extinct in a giant nuclear war, will Twinkies become so mutated that they actually come alive?
Creeeeeepy...
-Jacob
bwahahaha :)
this is the kind of stuff that's missing from horror films!
Heh, the dust and grime on the bottom layer of the first cake made it blend in so well with the tray it was on that at first glance I thought, "Oh, one year after bakers, survivors get so desparate for cake they start frosting and decorating irons."
so, is this like langoliers or i am legend virus type attack... or nuclear pastry waste?
This reminds me so much of the movie "Idiocracy"! I love it!
HYSTERICAL!!
Not gonna lie, I would possibly get married a second time just to have a Twinkie cake. Well, and yeah because I love my husband.
HA ha ha ha ha ha!! The Twinkies! The sound guy! The narrator!! The "cake"! The alliteration!
*sniff*
LOVE this post!!! And that's not just the cold medicine talking!
Twinkie the Kid cleans up real nice. Diggin' the twinkie tower. Wouldn't eat it, but it's still cute.
I don't know if this was your intent, but I now MUST watch "I Am Legend."
~Vik
Is it really THAT expensive to re-do the display cakes once in awhile?! Merciful heavens.
Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine ate the cake that was hundreds of years old...
OMGosh, the Twinkie cake is way too funny!!!
The worsening wrecks of writing had me writhing on the floor, flopping fitfully face first.
WV inguite. One hundred years from now the world might go up in flames, but that icing will not inguinte.
One of the best posts in a while. Great parody.
but not in the US, right? RIGHT?!
I love the Twinkie cake. That's the only one that looks (or smells) like you could still eat it 10,000 years later. :) Kinda like Sally Davies 6 month old happy meal http://www.flickr.com/photos/sallydavies/sets/72157624739645253/, or Dennis Stoltzfoos' 15 year old CUPCAKES http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/2010/10/1995-and-counting-nondecomposing/
Credit to Sarah of thehealthyhomeecomomist.com for links from her page
Definitely one of my top 5 wreck posts ever. There could not have been a more perfect ending than twinkies. If you used Bruce Willis' line from Die Hard instead of Yee-haw, it would've made #1.