Zero Craps Given
June 25, 2013 Today's bakeries face a lot of challenges: laziness, incompetence, negativity, temper tantrums, extra long bathroom breaks...
But enough about your kids. Let's talk about the bakers.
See, I'm starting to think some of them have just... well... stopped giving a flying crap.
;)
Or in this case, perhaps giving too much of one.
And just think: Someone was PAID ... to do THAT.
This, too:
;)
And this:
;)
And this:
;)
And this:
;)
The good news: I've managed to convince a bunch of bakers that cupcake cakes (pthooie!) will always be hideous, no matter how hard they try.
The bad news: So they've just stopped trying.
;)
It's a hollow victory, sure, but I'll take it.
(Besides, this is still an improvement.)
I see this next design a lot, and I'm convinced it began as a dare:
;)
"Oh yeah? Well *I* bet we could drag our fingers all through this here icing, and customers will STILL buy it!"
Sometimes I think about my great-grandfather, a proud man who left home at age 13 to spend his life overcoming poverty and obstacles with dignity, grace, and hard work. Then I see something like this:
;)
... and I think, "DUDE - they spelled everything right! Amazing!"
(And I'll bet you a whoopie pie you just thought the exact same thing. THIS IS WHAT WRECKERATORS HAVE DONE TO US, PEOPLE.)
Of course, that amazement only lasts as long as it takes me to open the next e-mail:
;)
Aaaand the wrecky balance is restored.
Thanks to Cathy W., Leah Z., Rachel C., Megan & Rebekah, Shoshana J., Colleen M., Kathleen S., Eliza T., & Luna L. for the fresh plate of perspective.
Reader Comments (72)
Google to the rescue! Yes, you can make gelatin sequins for cake (scroll down to second entry:)
http://confessionsofascratchbaker.blogspot.com
However, seeing the state of decoration for the outside of the cake, and the fact that none of these sequins made it to the outside, I seriously doubt that this wreckerator took the time to make sequins.
These are just sad, and depressing. The dare cake is disgusting -- who wants a cake where fingers have been dragged through the icing? YUCK!!!!
I really enjoy this site and almost always find it funny and entertaining, which is why I was so surprised at your assumption about "our" kids... A little insulting. And I don't even have kids...
@Summer, who said:
"...at least it's embracing the limitations of the medium and going abstract instead of trying to look like a unicorn."
~~~~~~~~
Priceless!! Absolutely priceless! My brain just flashed on "The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects" (Marshall McLuhan 1967)
=^~.~^=
Did someone (Stoich91) call for DOC? I think these are best left to the Cakeoliers.
#1 Traditional? What tradition is this: Carrie's prom, perhaps?
#2 Those are sprinkles, right? (Please be sprinkles, not something about to hatch, pleasepleaseplease...)
#4 I don't know, but $3.99 seems reasonable for a pound (of) cake. However, it appears that the "sell by" date was excessively optimistic. Either that or the relative humidity had recently been in the single digits at this location (unlikely in March).
#5 This is a reasonable attempt at a Vortex of Doom. I mean, how many of us have actually seen one? Before now, that is.
#7 Memo: The Bakery will no longer be observing 'take your child to work' day. If there are any questions, please see the attached photo.
#8 I like how they fixed the border on this one. You totally can't tell anything was wrong unless you look.
@sendingtheclowns - It's true, there are variations. The quote as I know it is attributed to George Berkeley (but known to my family through Homer Simpson!).
The dare cake was a product of the preschool field trip to the bakery:
Baker: "Hey, kids. You think finger-painting with pudding is fun? You don't know from fun until you've finger-painted in cake frosting...on a real cake. Alrighty now, everybody gets to do their own cake!" <Thinks to himself: Brilliant! I'm a genius! 16 cakes decorated in under an hour and I didn't have to pay a dime in wages!>
People, people. Let's all just calm down here for one gelasequined minute. Can't we all just believe that these cake decorators are all actually trying to achieve life with their life right now? Must you be so selfish and picky about the "state" of your "cake product" which you bought with "money?"
Just imagine: maybe these decorators are actually English professors who are taking Anatomy and Physiology this summer as part of a research project. Maybe that decorator-English-professor-A&P-student has only been able to attend 2-4 hours of each 12-hour class week. Maybe that decorator-English-professor-A&P-student is hoping to be able to purchase the title page of the textbook with the tips she earns in the little styrofoam cup at her office. But with the downturn of the economy and the laziness of people who can't reach ALL the way to their wallets, her only hope is to learn the name of her textbook is to read her A&P syllabus. This is too hard for the illiterate, as evidenced by yesterday's comments.
Stop thinking this is all about YOU, and how your nervous action potential propagates down the axon away from the somatic motor neuron's cell body to reach the axon terminals and then the synaptic end bulbs of the somatic motor neuron, already! Even if cake #7 is a dendrite.
The fifth one looks like an accidental solar system
At least I can help with Cake # 1. There used to be a phenomena discovered by photographers called "black lightning." It was only visible on developed photos.* There was a lot of curiosity about it until it was determined to be regular old lightning that was so bright it overexposed the film.** Clearly, the decorator of cake # 1 had a brilliant thought, a flash in the pan, as it were*** and the icing got overexposed. ta da!
*before digital, young 'uns
** see (*)
***also an old photography phrase as the original flash (before light bulbs and batteries) was made by chemicals held up in a little pan or tray by the photographer
OMGgggg,
finally some chicks that bake like me! (smiling)
Cake #5: I immediately thought of the Eye of Sauron. The piping texture on the next to the last cake resembles a 1970's bedspread my sisters had. Wait........Is that where the bed spread went to?
Yum plain butter cream sequins. Sounds delicious to me lol. As for that first cake I have seen those at a certain wally world lol and I do wonder who makes them and why. Ah well mine is not to wonder but to laugh and cry at these wrecks.
@zoomom: Homer, huh? That works for me! I love Homer! He's an evil genius. =^-.-^=
Hey, sendingtheclowns - I love all those songs too! My mother was born in 1928 and she sang me all those great 30s and 40s songs. Wish we could get together ...
I think the first cake is "traditional" in the same way that Rachmaninov is a "classical" composer, or Jackson Pollock is a "conventional" artist - when you're 17, everything that existed before you were born was contemporary with the dinosaurs. This theory, of course, relies on an assumption that really horrible-looking cakes have been around since before 1996. Now, that can't be too hard to prove...
Nyperold, the cake was originally for Emil on the occasion of his brith, but, unfortunately, the mohel had very unsteady hands so now it's Emily.
#3
I've seen maps of the planet Mars from the old days when it was thought to have canals that look kinda like that. . .
#9
I hope that those streaks are all at least from fingers.
@ Lost In Tennessee (#8)
I am put in mind of the joke whose punch line is "You should see how we glaze the doughnuts.".
That "Traditional" sticker is totally wrong. Jackson Pollack was the father of the modernist abstract "splash" painting style, and hardly considered traditional.
As someone who has made many Rocky Horror and burlesque costumes, as well as dragwear, I know all too well; sequins breed like Tribbles. Drop one sequin on the ground, in ten minutes, there will be dozens. You will find them in crazy and inexplicable places for weeks after you use them. So the thought of sequins on a cake... *eating* sequins? It made me visualize my stomach bursting with sequins a half an hour after I ate it, like Veronica Cartwright and the cherry pits in "The Witches of Eastwick". But with sequins. A horrifying yet glamourous death, to be sure.
The fifth cake is a psychedelic wormholey vortexy thingy that may very well consume the soul of the consumer, and the seventh cake is Carol Anne's Closet Door Monster from "Poltergeist".
Yes, I am weird.
Storm
Whenever I see "Brithday," I assume that it is supposed to be the day the child received their "brit" (Wikipeida it you goyim). Don't know why you'd want a cake for that, but whatever.
It gives me some small hope when I see that others are morbidly curious as to why a cake says ""plain buttercream-sequins"
And then I realize most of us probably don't work in bakeries.
"Oh yeah? Well *I* bet we could drag our fingers all through this here icing, and customers will STILL buy it!"
You surely meant "Oh yeah? Well *I* bet we could lick our fingers and drag them all through this here icing, and customers will STILL buy it!"
*Bleurghhhh*
P.S. I missed the pink border too.