You Remind Me of the Babe
November 1, 2011 Warning: This post is pretty disturbing. Maybe skip it. You have been warned.
"What babe?"
The babe with the power.
"What power?"
THE POWER TO GIVE YOU NIGHTMARES FOR THE REST OF YOUR NATURAL LIFE.
;)
"Oh. THAT babe."
And before you ask...
;)
Yes, it's cake.
;)
Yes, it's a baby shower cake.
Yes, it's red velvet.
And yes, THIS is where the mom-to-be made the first slice:
;)
Thanks to "army wife," who'd rather have that baby in front of me than a frontal lobotomy - but I am SO not cooperating. STAY BACK, woman. I mean it!
UPDATE: The baker has spoken!! And as you'd expect, she has a wicked sense of humor and is pretty darn awesome. So let's all give a rousing wrecky welcome to Jana of Jana's Fun Cakes! Check her site for a creepy dummy/marionette cake, too.
Oh, and to answer your questions regarding that cup in the last photo, Jana says:
"the goop in the cup is corn syrup and food coloring, meant for added slime."
Good to know.
Reader Comments (398)
I'll have a slice of left hemisphere, please, extra red velvet. (Holds out plate... )
I love how much reaction this cake is getting! Most people don't get it, and don't have to. It's cake art, maybe a little gross... but from what the baker said, it was requested by the MOM-TO-BE... So I challenge you people to open your minds and look beyond the shock and see the talent in sculpt and detail. Kudos Jana's Fun Cakes! So happy you tipped the scales with so much controversy at Cake Wrecks!!!!
Ok, now I know why I never had children!!!! I was afraid of the baby shower! Umm,,,I ahhh, it .....I am ..... forget it I can't come up with anything that is not as gross as that cake!
Yuck, double yuck, Oh God just YUCK! YUCK! GAG!
Holy cow people the baker gave the PARENTS exactly what they asked for. The problem I have with the cake it there is no clip on the cord and how long it is makes it creepy. It would have been nicer on a blanket or something but it looks JUST like my 20 month old son did when he was born.
Why is the baby dead? Who gives someone a dead baby cake for at a baby shower?
I know that some babies come out blueish and then "pink up" as the get more oxygen. So I can excuse that. But they also come out screaming and crying and writhing. Maybe if the baby had its eyes open or its face scrunched up, it would look alive.
If a recently born baby is lying on a silver tray all peaceful looking, it means one thing. It is dead.
Is it creepy? Yes! Is it amazingly well done? Also yes!! Is it what the customer wanted? Apparently so! So all in all, I say great job, baker! (and there are some more amazingly well done -- and even adorable - cakes on her blog).
Beautifully done but, no, I don't "get" it. That's okay, it wasn't meant for me. Still want eye bleach as all I could think of was the Trainspotting baby, too, so that's still my problem. The baby I watched enter the world had no blue tinge to him at all so there's the one issue I'd put on the baker but some do so- nice job, lady. Very glad the mom was cool with it!
Naomi and Tia, thanks for the funnies!!
zoomom, what can we have you count down to next? (evil smile)
Am I the only one still humming that song? And repeating the dialogue line for line from that point on?
Oh, and yeah, creepy baby.
I've been sitting here all day and not been able to get this post out of my head. I've come back a few times to read the comments and after reading Elsa's mothers comments I'm more disturbed by this than that scary clown featured on Sunday. Yes this cake is a work of art and I don't blame the bakers for wanting to take credit, and no that does not forgive the fact they created something so insanely creepy there are no words. I cannot believe the mother actually says the cake looked like her daughter's ultrasound picture and she happily sliced into her brain! Yes it's just cake but how can you look at something representing your beautiful little girl and slice into it and then eat it. I'm half surprised she didn't have the bakery do a cake of the baby literally being born.
Truly horrific but you have to admit that it is lifelike (deathlike?)
**I** want to know if they based the face on the sonogram pictures!!!! all the rest of it is horrifying enough, but PLEASE tell me they didn't base it on what the kids face might actually look like. that mother is going to have nightmares. UGH!!!!!
Wow. Too many comments to reasonably read thru them all! Did anyone mention the fact that this cake has a....ummm....(how do I put this...)...backdoor? I don't think I can eat anything that has a poop chute. At least the red velvet is chocolatey? *insert poop jokes here*
Oy! Perhaps I'm the only one who noticed the fecal portal on the cake...if that's the case, I'll just go and hide. :S
My god that's horrifying. At least the baker is aware of how weird it is (although really how could you not be?)
NOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPE!
Hey, it's a cake. Lighten up you cry babies. Awesome cake Jana!!
I showed this to my mom. She said she wouldn't eat that even if it was the most delicious chocolate cake in the world. This is basically her equivalent to saying she wouldn't touch it with a 39 and a half foot pole.
Wow. Much scarier than the halloween cakes! Should be moaning in shock....BUT 251 comments and counting. hysterical laughter. Must look away now.
I want to say that while this is indeed disturbing that people would do this cake for a mother, the baker did a wonderful job at making it look so lifelike and real. It's not a wreck except for the very poor taste the mother-to-be's friends/family had to create this.
And this is where my husband finds me staring at the computer and says "Close your mouth, Laura."
I believe my instant reaction to that first picture was "OH! WHAT THE F---!" and covered the picture with my hand. I quickly realized that I did not have enough hands to cover the pictures as I scrolled down and tried to read the captions.
And then my husband (oh so naive) had the folly to ask me "What?"
So I showed him the picture. :}
Bwahahahaha!
Who wants to eat a baby? Who wants to eat a baby that's blue and dead-looking? Who wants to watch other people eating a dead, blue baby? That's red on the inside? GAG!
I am nearly speechless..wow. Just scary enough for after Halloween lol. And yup now I am sure to have nightmares..
For the people saying the closed eyes contribute to the dead look: would it really have been better if they were open? And staring into the deepest, darkest corners of your soul?
I'm going to be charitable and assume the blue tinge was the cake wrecker's effort to simulate vernix caseosa, the white goo newborns are sometimes covered with when they come out. I've only ever seen brand-new newborns on film, not in person, but I've seen it make the baby look bluish. (Midwives and OBs help me out here!)
And looking on the wrecker's amazing website, I'd really like to know the occasion the Jesus-head cake was made for. As a cradle-Catholic-adult-agnostic, I found it -- and the idea of cutting into and eating it -- almost as creepy as the blue baby.
EPIC.
FAIL.
Sweet Jesus I wish I could unsee that!!! Talented baker, but erghhhhhhhhhhh - nightmares fo' sure!
oh dear lord, after seeing the pic where it had been cut i am speechless
I think this cake is awesome, on many levels... firstly that the Mom-to-be was brave enough to consider something so far of left field that most decorators would simply hang up on a request like that, second, that her good friend was skilled enough to create this cake - I dream about having these sort of skills - third, that both Mom-to-be AND the decorator were willing to out themselves... and yet, people are still willing to head-slap them both for choices they willingly made.
So it's not to your taste, fine. Honestly, it's not to my taste either, but at least I am good-mannered enough to find the positives - did no-one ever teach most of you that "if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all?".
Wow.
My nephew looked like that when he was born..... he had to be life flighted half way across the state and kept in a Pediatric ICU for a week. I would have a fit if a baker brought that to my shower. I'd freak.
This is epic xD The brain-looking inside is the best part.
Okay, even though the cake is made to order and the customer apparently likes it---I think that the cake is still in bad taste. Anyone at the shower who had ever miscarried or had a stillbirth would have been very upset having to see that. I've had three (healthy) kids, and am happy to have never had a baby shower! (Even though I know that my friends and family would have NEVER ordered a cake like that.)
Hmmm, thoughts of my best friend...... ONLY because for some unknown reason she is totally HOT for David Bowie, as well as Tom Petty....... Still I love her regardless!!!!!
Hey! Hey! Her head don't come off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
there is something seriously wrong and sick about the person who made this they should be locked up!
There are no words...O......M.......G.......wow
Missed yesterday due to meetings...BUT....Love me some David Bowie and Labyrinth!!!! Now I have that song stuck in my head. :) It's a good thing.....
Talented but disgusting
Congratulations on your impending stillbirth!
Somebody really needs help. No matter which way I try to put a positive spin on it, I just can't. AND, WTF is the red stuff in the jar next to the cake? Please tell me it's not raspberry sauce to pour over?
There seem to be only 2 reactions to this cake:
It's horrible, looks dead, and hurts people to look at
It's awesome, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to get over it because it's just cake/just a joke.
I have to tell you something. I have held my dead baby in my arms, all blue, cold, and still. That's something it is not possible to "get over" so don't you DARE tell me I have to get over it.
That's not something that's funny, so don't you DARE tell me my sense of humor is deficient because I can't find it in my soul to laugh about the worst thing that has ever happened in my life.
The cake obviously took a lot of talent and hard work to make. The customer was pleased. They don't expect everyone to "get it" which is fine. I just hope to God they will never have to "get it" why stuff like this hurts like hell for people who have lived through the reality.
Now go ahead and mock some more, about how some people don't have a sense of humor or whatever allows you to numb your soul to the reality that babies die. I get it. I was there once, living in the happy little dream world where stuff like that only happens to "other people." I mean this sincerely, I hope you never ever have to experience this reality for yourselves, no one should have to. And if anything I've said has made you think, take a moment and thank the universe or any deity you believe in that your life is still intact and your whole world has not come crashing down around you as you held a still, quiet, cold, blue baby in your arms and whispered "goodbye."
At first I was a bit disturbed by the surgical tray, which did seem to imply that the baby was dead. But I've had fun teasing people with the grossness of the whole birthing process, and I could see this just as a fun way to show that. If everyone knew what was going on (as seems to be the case), it could be lots of fun.
I just have to say after reading most of the over 200 comments (including the comment from the baker and mother-to-be) that I'm sure it was never intended to be "out there for the world" to see. It is very unfortunate that so many people are taking this as a personal assault. If you've read the comments, you can see that this cake was ordered to duplicate a sonogram photo and the actual people involved are happy with the outcome!
Don't make this into something that it is not...
I had dead baby dreams (nightmares?) last night.
I'm totally blaming this cake.
I read this post shortly before bed last night. And I had dreams related to this post. Luckily, not of the baby cake... I dreamed of Jareth. So, Jen, you have my gratitude :D
This post freaked me out (and then I had to show my coworkers and freak them out because I'm nothing if not a giver). I can only imagine how traumatized I would have been had I been pregnant and seeing this. Considering I ran out of the room in tears when I unfortunately saw "The Butterfly Effect" the "Dawn of the Dead" remake and "Jersey Girl" while pregnant...
To Mara: I'm truly sorry for your loss; however, I do have a few points to respectfully make. First, as you said you read the comments, then you know from the baker and mom-to-be that it was NOT intended to be a dead baby.
In addition, there is no indication that this was intended to be seen outside the party. Meaning that it really wasn't so much in poor taste. It wasn't put out there where grieving parents might come across it. And, again, it wasn't intended to be a dead baby in the first place, so I don't see bad taste here really. There is the issue of cutting into the cake, but that is a matter of personal comfort level-- some people, although they know it is cake, still find it macabre, whereas others just think of it as cake.
Again, I am truly sorry for your loss, and I absolutely understand that this cake would bring up painful reminders. For most of us, it doesn't have that painful reminder. This doesn't mean we are, as you suggested, going "that only happens to other people"; no one here is saying dead babies are A-OK.
No one here is telling you to get over it. Any "Get over it" comments here were directed at the massive amounts of "ewwww" comments, or at least that's how I read it. There are pages of those, but only a few people expressing how this reminded them of their own sorrow. No one here is saying dead babies are funny, or dead baby cakes; a live but creepy looking baby? That is a matter of sense of humor. I really didn't see mocking in the comments. There were some people who thought there was over reacting, but they didn't mock. I counted 5 comments along the lines of "It's just cake!", and that was out of 300.
This post, I hope, lessened some of the pain you felt at people's reactions here; that's what it was written for, not to put you down at all, so I very much hope it came off that way. If I was in your place and had gotten the impression that people were mocking and telling me I had no sense of humor, I would be equally upset; I just think that people weren't doing that :) (Also, if this was actually meant to be a dead baby, I'd have the same issues, though I've never had children or known a baby who died; I'd agree with you there.)
1. I find baby cakes disturbing. Do not want.
2. This is a very well done baby cake, and the baker deserves praise. I'd totally eat it. I'd make faces about it, sure, but it looks tasty and a lot of work went into it.
3. A few people here are taking this a lot too far. It's not dead baby humor; and even if it were, it still wouldn't be a reason to call for saying the mother/baker needs to be locked up or whatnot.
Geez! and you people gave me crap for tucking a cute little kewpie doll in a belly cake!
O.M.G! I literally just threw up in my mouth, sooooo disgusting. Dead baby cake at a baby shower. Did mom know she was gonna deliver stillborn?? WTF..... wreckiest cake of all time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! do not make necklaces out of this one
HA! That is awesome! I love it! I can't even imagine the amount of work that had to go into making this!