Thursday
Feb042010
Recycled Wrecks
February 4, 2010 Ever wonder what happens to the personalized cakes customers refuse to buy?
Why, they get "fixed" and set out for another unsuspecting schmo valued customer to purchase, of course!
Sometimes you can even spot these Wrecky rejects, if you look verrry closely and have a keen eye for detail:
Just think of the lucky eight-year-old who got this for his/her birthday:"You got my name wrong?!?"
"No, of course not, Sweetie!
We just bought you a cake someone else didn't want."
There are a few accepted methods for recycling a Wreck. In addition to the "Scrape 'N Sell" we saw above, there's also "The Schmear":
"The Glob":
And, my personal favorite, "The Ice-Out":
Like Wite-Out - only way, way more obvious.Jonathan Y., Leslie E., Erica H., & Jake S., how wrong is it that I'm thinking buttercream Wite-Out is a pretty good idea? 'Course, you think the office supplies go missing a lot NOW. Heh.
- Related Wreckage: Recipes for Wreckage
Reader Comments (82)
When I took a cake decorating class, my instructor said that "Icing will cover a multitude of sins." These cakes prove her wrong!
Is moistest even a word? Some people really need to learn proper English!
I feel like crying for some reason when I look at these.
I work at a supermarket and the decorators at my work put the unwanted cakes into the lunch room for the staff instead of trying to palm them off to unsuspecting customers. Having said that, if they did cover anything up, they would do too good a job to notice. I have never seen a cake wreck at my work because the decorators are fantastic.
I like the pine cone-like roses in the last example.
at least the Glob is crowning "the moistest cake ever!" Maybe the glob is there to keep all the moisture in? *lol*
WV: slize: I'd like a slize of the moist glob cake, please.
LOL I just LOVE how "The Moistest Cake You've Ever Tasted" has a big ole lake slapped onto it. Now had they stuck/piped a couple of rubber duckies on to it they might have gotten away with it... hey I said MIGHT;)
the moistest cake you have ever tasted? Can you really taste moist, and if so.. do you want to advertise that? ;)
"Now had they stuck/piped a couple of rubber duckies..."
Perhaps it is due to the late hour, but these unfortunate words set in combination seemed to jump from the page at me.
Isn't the word "moist" sort of on par with others like "damp" and "dank" and "humid?" And just shy of "mildewed?"
"The Glob"...but it is "The Moistest Cake You've Ever Tasted"!
hahaha
I had my own near Cake Wreck recently. It was a very close call.
That first one brings a whole new meaning to the thought of a "cupcake cakewreck." I mean come on: it's just cupcakes in a circle. They're pretending to be a cake. And seriously, how long could it possibly take to slip a new piece of cardboard under there, hm?
I can see a theme running in the first three cakes; if you are using blue icing, don't make a mistake. Icing it out doesn't work. Kind of like the whole 'don't wear a black bra/underwear under white shirt/shorts.
Yes, like white out, just far more obvious but at least twice as tasty, which is the only thing to save the cake.
"Moistest cake you've ever tasted"? I think I'll pass.
- Becky of http://lovelustandpixiedust.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">Love, Lust and Pixie Dust.
This was a running joke with my family when I was growing up. For my 16th birthday I got a cake with palm trees on it that said "Bon Voyage Trip & Buffy!" Another birthday cake had "Happy St. Swithen's Day" on it. Everyone knew the cake wasn't someone else's leavings - it had been ordered that way - but it was still a lot of fun.
How? How does this happen???
these pictures are so funny!!!! everytime I come to your blog, I laugh so hard at every post you make! You are so hilarious!
In all fairness, at least the "Blob" could be re-imaged into a pond with a few dabs of icing and some plastic bits and bobs... Snerk...
I used to work for a grocery store, and if someone returned a cake that was too customized to resell, it would show up in the break room for the employees to eat. I loved those cakes.
Wow-- I just found this blog the other day and boy am I glad! It makes me laugh until I cry. It's some much needed stress-relief!
i really want to leave a comment but i can't stop laughing out loud at these. :)
What annoys me is that the really bad ones don't go home with an employee. (Being bought by someone who just wants cake is perfectly acceptable though.) But the really embarrassing ones, let them go home with an employee who probably has someone to give it to that isn[t going to be buying a cake otherwise.
Why not? because the bakery is to afraid that the bakers will make a mistake purposefully and rip them off. This happened at a restaurant I worked for, who make us throw PERFECTLY GOOD food if the customer refused it for whatevcer reason. Because the policy protected the company from conspiracies between the cooks and the wait staff. seriously? I had also worked at a more reasonalbe one who let us take home the untouched but sent back food. No one abused the system, but we didn't have to WASTE food when there are hungry people in the world, including underpaid scraping by waitreses.
sorry for the rant. that was a tough time in my life. I feel better now. Please don't chare me $90 for therapy session. :-)
Did you send those pictures to There I fixed it?!
Hey cake decorators, how hard would it be to just decorate over the scrapped-off remains of your errors? I think you should take a lesson from tattoo artists on this one. A big red heart with "Mom" in the middle can cover up anything!
*shudder* "Moistest" is a word that should be forever banned from the English language.
The part that I love about the last one is that, ineffective correcting aside, the previous version omitted a somewhat important comma. Le sigh.
I ran across your site from a yahoo news a while back and I'm glad I did! I love your sense of humor!!! You crack me up literally everyday! Well at least everyday I get on! So keep writing and I'll keep reading! Thanks for the laughs!
Sincerely,
A Happy Follower
"The moistest cake you've ever tasted"? Is that to convince you to buy it?
"Hmmm... it's got a great big blue cover-up smear on it, there are random swirls everywhere and it just looks...yuk, but it's the moistest cake I've ever tasted, so I'll buy it!" ?!?!?
These are the kind of cakes that ended up in the break room at my old job. One decorator's screw up is another minimum wage worker's free cake at lunch break.
I know I'm late to the party here, but the cake with the blue smear is an actual cake from the book. I think it's called 'cinco de mayo', and in the middle there's supposed to be a food color smear/smudge thing that isn't supposed to look that crappy. It's still an ugly cake though. I work at Safeway, and it isn't a very popular design.... but the smear isn't a mistake!
Very late to the party -- I'm a baker/decorator at a local chain, and smears and stuff like that are usually the result of either 1) the color of the original icing (i.e., blue, red, black -- colors that easily smear and are difficult to cover); 2) the person removing the mistake not knowing the "tricks of the trade" to cover it up; or 3) a combination of the two. Giving the messed-up cake to the help is considered shrink; a lot of managers would rather sell the cake at any cost, no matter how ugly the repair.
And yeah, the big white smear was definitely a photo cake.
In the Janet Evanovich books (Ten Big Ones, Fearless Fourteen, etc) Stephanie Plum and her family always buy birthday cakes that some family didn't want...It's like their special treat: It's ALWAYS someone's birthday, why wait for a special day to have cake?
Badgerpdx