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)
I love Life After People. Thanks so much for another awesome post.
Amazing alliteration artistry awesomely applied!
That's disgusting! But that Twinkie cake is a total win!
I like the Twinkie cake. I like cake on the rocks (get it?). Most of the rest look like they are made of rock (perhaps they are -- by now).
I don't think I want the back story on the first one, though -- it looks sad.
... So, Twinkies actually will survive the apocalypse?
Just come across your blog... words dont describe how bad some of these cakes are!
If it wasn't for Twinkies and Coca Cola, I would have never made it through college.
And I, too, want to know where the health inspectors are! I run a small bookstore and sell candy bars and lollipops... all wrapped goods. And I still have to pay a $150 "food handler's fee" and suffer an annual inspection by the Inspector. These cakes would never get by him!
WV: "mortsp" - Mort (Death) has more assistants than just Death of Rats - there's also Mortsp - Death of Cakes!
Merry at Annie's Book Stop
Twinkies DO have an expiration date! Really! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkies#Shelf_life" rel="nofollow">For proof, I cite the almighty Wikipedia.
You've been watching the History Channel again, haven't you, Jen?
"Life After People" has obviously twisted your sense of humor, further.
Although, the alliterations were funny.
Amazing! I love Life After People and you've got the tone down pat.
Tricia L said...
With the exception of the Twinkie cake, they all appear to be from non-US bakeries ...
How the heck can you tell??? Crappy food prep/storage hygiene is everywhere. It knows no boundaries.
The twinkie cake is cute ... except for all the chemicals I know are in those things. And no, eating them will not make you live longer, it will just preserve your body longer after you die. No joke. Believe it or not, humans (on average) now take between 3 and 7 years longer to fully decompose compared to what we did 50 years ago, solely because of all the chemicals in our diets. Gross, huh?
Elizabeth
Sydney, Australia
The only thing missing...is SANDRA LEE!
Seriously?
Ok, so the only think left after total nuclear annihilation (don't ask me how to spell it) will be grody cakes and the cockroaches to eat them.
That said, I'm totally in awe that there weren't cockroaches on these "lovely" displays of current decorator's art. *snort*
Oh, man, I have got to get some pics from the bakery in the basement of the ex-church.
Who would honestly want to purchase a cake after viewing these 'presentation pieces'?
love the cameraman...
~~Di
I groaned through the entire post...until I got to the Twinkie cake :) Then I laughed :)
I want a Twinkie Cake now *g*
That dusty yellow one, they forgot to write "it a gril" on it :)
WV: hemblec What passerby say when they see these cakes in bakery windows
The second cake looks disgusting. Problem is that I have seen cakes in bakery windows that look like that. Which explains why I buy my cakes usually at a supermaket. Great post.
i think that second one is growing stuff.
this post is all the more funny because we (my brother & i) are watching life after people streaming on netflix and we do wonder who writes that overly-dramatic narration.
Great post! Great alliteration. Shouldn't it have started "In a world where...", though?
Loved the melodramatic alliteration!
And am in shock that these are bakeries that are still in business. Seriously, if their freshly decorated cakes are so much worse than these battered aged specimens, I'm sticking with Costco or Loblaws (I'm depressed to report I've never seen a wreck in their displays) or a really good local bakery I know of. Or making my own. (They're not pretty-- I have minimal decorating skills-- but they taste great)
And if these bakeries LOOK that bad, can you imagine how their cakes taste?
Back in the 1970s when I was in college, I used to go by this bakeshop every day while I lived in Toronto (on or near St. Clair Ave). The cakes in the window could have been decades old. I wonder if it is still there and still has the same cakes! In fact, I wonder if these are those cakes?????
While I was still in high school, for a few months, I travelled from Ottawa to Toronto on the Voyageur bus. There was, for many, many years, a truck stop along Highway 7 called "The Whispering Pines" (I called it "The Withering Pines" because of the food) where the buses would stop for a break.
The first weekend, I was perusing the desserts in the cooler and noticed a piece of cherry cheesecake with a fork stuck in it in such a way that the cake had cracked. At the end of the weekend, on my return trip, I noticed the same piece in the same corner of the cooler... and again at the next weekend.... and the one after that.... it was there for the full six weeks that I travelled back and forth.
The Whispering Pines closed quite a few years later.... I wonder if it was because someone finally ate that piece of cheesecake?
That Twinkie cake makes me think of the Family Guy episode when after Y2K the Griffins search out the Twinkie factory because they know they'll survive anything!
As for the other cakes... I guess these bakeries haven't changed or updated their designs in a dog's age, you know, since they don't feel the need to take these hockey pucks out for a cleaning or even to replace them with newer ones.
I freakin' love "Life After People"! This is brilliant! Love it!!!
Bwahahahaha!
Blech, what is going on in these places
Love it! "Life after People" is one of my favorite shows. I just wish there were more episodes. This was great!!
@Annek, you're right -- Sandra Lee should be represented. Here's why:
This is about life after bakers. I know bakers. Bakers are my best friends (well, my best friend & fiancee is a good cook & knows how to bake). Sandra Lee is no baker.
I always knew twinkies never die. Scary that these places have not changed their displays in decades. Makes one wonder how old their wreckerators are cause maybe they are immortal. Now that would be horrifying lol.
Is one of these the fairy cake that's been at the center of the Total Perspective Vortex for the last few millenia?
All i can really say is wow!
I have 6 high-end cake shops around my house, and the cakes in the pics are WAY nicer.
:D the creativity level of this blog just keeps ramping up- this is why you have such devoted fans!!
-Barbara Anne
"Mr said...
Is one of these the fairy cake that's been at the center of the Total Perspective Vortex for the last few millenia?"
can't breathe-laughingtoohard-call911-bwahahahahhahahahahhahaha-
-BarbaraAnne
i just have to say that i love the twinkie cake it's so cute...and also love that it's the 10 000 years later cake too.
Y'know, the twinkie cake actually is kinda cool looking! But, uh, we know what this stuff does for your arteries. Honestly though, it gave me the idea: if you can't bake, just take a whole lot of mini pastries and stick them together like some kind of sculpture - heck - then you can put in a whole bunch of tastes and flavors to accommodate everyone's cake likings! Right?
-Loretta in NJ
www.internalgardens.com
I'm not much for puns and more often than not I don't catch your references but I loves me some alliteration.
Oooh and that twinkie cake is adorable.
Aw, man, the one day I leave town, I miss another neglected display cake post. Anyway, I think Napoleon Dynamite had a word that would aptly describe these: "decroded."
According to a comment from the last one of these posts, display cakes are real frosting on top of an artificial base, like styrofoam or something. So how lazy/cheap do these bakers have to be to not just hose them off and re-ice them every few weeks or so? Honestly.
INCONCIEVABLE!
@Jeliecam
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Awesome!
But the twinkie cake, it is so cute! I must ask, why all the rocks! O_0 why! What is that?
i would be miserable to receive any of those cakes. I would think some1 didn't like me or outright hated me.
Except for the twinkie cake. That would be great as a joke cake, like 'my first cake failed, so this was my back-up' (which may have been what happened)
wv: zoothe
I zoothe [soothe] myself w/ warm baths.
I love you for this post! That's one of my faves on the history channel. And I love the fact that the Twinkies are still intact, like they said they would be. tee hee hee!
I was walking along a street in London looking for a snack and saw a bakery. I decided not to go in when I saw those first three cakes in the window. Although I did consider going in to tell them that I had decided not to go in. Conundrum?
I took the picture of the second cake in Otavalo, Ecuador at a local bakery. They must have seen me taking pictures and then they felt guilty, because the next day, this cake and others like it had been removed from the window display!
Manager- The cakes in the window are moldy!
Worker- But we dropped the key of the display cabinet down the toliet, remember?