Summer Poetry Slam
July 6, 2015 What can I say, these wreck bring out the poet in me.
Or maybe I've had too much sun today.
He slides along,
UNseeing
UNknowing
What's with
The balloons?
;)
*****
The Earth cries out from her festering
toxic grave:
"JELLO POOL PARTY TIME!"
;)
*****
Is it the blue sky that beckons?
Is it the ocean waves, you reckon?
BAKER SURE AS SH*T DON'T KNOW
;)
*****
Those flip-flops
Could kill
Either one of us
;)
*****
A gaping tidal wave roars and rushes
Building
Building
What is this
Surfing for ants?
;)
*****
Mmmm
Smeary
;)
*****
Bound in free-floating friendship
Bound to live and love
And try again
Oh, look
More balloons
;)
Thanks to Elizabeth C., Claire B., Dave B., David C., Jennifer V., Karin P., & Catherine S. for the best Summer wrecks in the 'verse.
*****
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Reader Comments (84)
That second cake wouldn't be so bad if the ladder were smaller... and the pool "jello" were a pleasant shade of blue. They do make blue jello, yes? I never eat the stuff, so I wouldn't know.
About 15 years ago, Woman's Day had a cake on it's cover that was a summer back yard complete with blue jell-o pool. It was the first time I had ever seen that "innovation" and I thought it would taste awful. It looked amateurish and unappetizing. But, compared to cake #2, it was a Renoir.
I think that Ali captured the sentiment behind the pool cake pretty well and without giving the impression that she was offended. I think I'm going to stick with that, thanks.
I'm gobsmacked by how everyone is reacting to that second cake. Look at it! Let's forget the green gel substance *hurk* and the crafting foam ladder for a moment to ponder... are those onion rings being used as flotation devices?
I'm Australian. I am NOT offended by the pool party cake you posted. Why would I be? I didn't make it! I don't see it as a matter of national pride. I wouldn't want a pool party in a green pool. We used to have one of those in our backyard!
I made that pool party cake for my daughter's 4th birthday. She loved it so much she keeps asking for another one! I used BLUE jelly, not green! I could send you a picture if you like.
Beloved Australian cake or not, the first thing I thought of when I saw the green "water" was the pool with the geese in it at the campground in "National Lampoon's Vacation." I share Rusty's and Audrey's look of disgust at the green water. I'm sure no offense was meant to anyone's mom. The cake is cute, and would have been a wonderful homemade cake for a child. It's just that a very unfortunate color used for the jello water. Can we not agree, it is a bad picture? Lighten up, Australia and please note Martha Stewart is certainly worthy of ridicule!
@Sarah, trifle is English not Australian. It's been around for twice as long as Australia has been colonised. But I agree it is a mess.
Screw the pool cake, all I wanna know is...did anyone else read "Mmmm smeary" in Pee Wee Herman's voice?
Thanks Cakewrecks. The facebook post lured me here, and yes, now I'm in trouble. Not for agreeing that the green pool party cake is terrifying (and it is), and apparently famous (good for it), but for looking at them without her. Thanks for nothing!
This cookbook sounds lovely and delightful. I can appreciate the warm fuzzy memories it invokes. And perhaps it's just a bad scan but it looks like kids are swimming in toxic waste. It's unfair to expect Jen and John to know every tradition and cake guide from other countries. I'm sure there are loads of lovely cookbooks or things American moms did for kids in the 70s/80s that other countries don't know about. Why would you? Probably a better picture or version would not have gotten their attention.
Face value, the water looks dreadful. Clearly such big-hearted people were not trying to offend women, mothers, Australia, etc. They just want to make us laugh. And I do at every post!
P.S. I think it's a-ok to not like a Martha Stewart creation. Just because she's talented doesn't mean you have to love everything she does. Even her own daughter had a show mocking some of her creations!
Now knowing that the second cake is from a famous Australian baking book, it makes me sad for Australia. The pool looks like it was filled with sludgy waste water.
I have known several Aussies and never have I found one to be offended. I took the responses as tongue-in-cheek offense.
That jelly really does look foul. And I need to get me one of them Aussie cookbooks. I make cupcakes. I'm not a cake baker. If I showed you photos of the Minecraft pumpkin cake I made two years ago...they're would be tears of both joy and fear.
Oh they were tongue in cheek posts by me ppl. Chill. (But don't diss our beloved cakes or the fact we bbq the animals on our national emblem!)
This cookbook sounds lovely and delightful. I can appreciate the warm fuzzy memories it invokes. And perhaps it's just a bad scan but it looks like kids are swimming in toxic waste. It's unfair to expect Jen and John to know every tradition and cake guide from other countries. I'm sure there are loads of lovely cookbooks or things American moms did for kids in the 70s/80s that other countries don't know about. Why would you? Probably a better picture or version would not have gotten their attention.
Face value, the water looks dreadful. Clearly such big-hearted people were not trying to offend women, mothers, Australia, etc. They just want to make us laugh. And I do at every post!
P.S. I think it's a-ok to not like a Martha Stewart creation. Just because she's talented doesn't mean you have to love everything she does. Even her own daughter had a show mocking some of her creations!
Bypassing the green pool cake for the moment...Are those Barbie shoes in the tidal wave the ants are surfing on the cookie cake? As for the pool cake it's not the color that makes me go :p it's the rim of chocolate frosting around the edge that looks like... I work in a professional bakery but not as a decorator. And we use the blue gel stuff from the Frozen cake to do a similar design.
Random observations:
- Ah, the first cake is obviously a commemoration of the first face-plant of the summer slip-n-slide season... How well we all remember...
- That sea-and-sky cake is cracking me up! It's almost M.C. Escher-ish, in a way.
- Am I the only one who sees antennae on the dark-haired kid in the 4th cake's pool?
- The fact that one surfing ant has apparently wiped out on the makes the fifth cake all the funnier.
- The smeary cake makes me worry - did everybody drown?
- Last cake... Quick, use the balloon to block the portal before the zombies get all the way through!
Loved all the poetry today, by the way! I read each one, then slowly scrolled down for the reveal, laughing every time. Great commentary. =-)
Taken as a whole, if the Aussie pool party cake is meant for home bakers and the rest were made by "professionals," then it's definitely pool party FTW. Also, Jell-O and. cake must have something going for it - look at the "poke" cakes that were so popular several decades ago.
Wow that first cake lol. Looks to be someone on a slip and slide. Though I don't think the poor person has a face left sliding that way lol. Wow to some of those other cakes. They scare and amaze me at the same time.
Ok, I'm not going to read all of the comments before jumping in here. Because internet.
1) if the Aussie pool cake is meant to be an amateur cake and not something purchased from a baker, I'm kind of on Team Not-A-Wreck-(but-I'm-sure-no-offense-was-intended-to-literally-all-Australian-women-[but-apparently-not-Australian-men]).
2) I'd like to go on record and say i criticize the heck out of Martha Stewart and encourage others to do so, too. Acknowledging the insanity is the first step to stopping the insanity.
Just for the record, the ladder of the offending pool is made of musk sticks and liquorice, and the floatation rings appear to be a cheezel and a burger ring. All of these things are delicious as is the ugly as hell cake. One if the Australian national pastimes is eating stuff that tastes amazing but looks horrendous, how do you think we came up with Vegemite?
Note: given that I had a professional baker make a very pretty colostomy bag cake for my mum's 60th and she retaliated by getting a fondant lamb leg bone on my 40th cake, my family may take this a tad far.
Just like to throw my jelly ring into the pool and say that as an Aussie I used to sit on the floor of the kitchen and leaf through my Mum's Australian Women Weekly's cookbook for hours (which I now own) and dream about having a jelly pool cake as my birthday cake. It's one of those amazing cakes which is the epitome of an Aussie summer and definitely NOT a wreck. I could definitely see how people could assume it was in all it's lime flavoured jelly (not jello) goodness... but this cake would not be the amazing institution that it was if the water was blue! #feelingnostalgic
Australians are not easily offended. Any posts made here that seemed 'offended' were most likely written in mock offence. Its cool, international relations have not been harmed. But yes, it's a book made for home cooks, and made at a time when naff was a way of life.
The pool party cake is not a wreck - it's endearing!! Having a birthday cake from the iconic Australian Women's Weekly Birthday Cake cookbook was a rite of passage for many of we Aussie kids. And the green jelly was part of the fun!!
Fond memories :-)
Am loving the Cake Wreck version of Still Call Australia Home! Thank you.
I have never laughed so hard at a Cake Wrecks comment thread. I couldn't wait to read the responses after seeing the AWW pool cake. I'm Australian too and also wanted that pool cake as a child of the 80s, but my mum said that one was too hard to make, so I never got it. Now I can see its scariness, but at the time there was no blue jelly/jello in Australia and I had a good imagination. I wanted to swim in that pool cake it looked so good to me as a child! I don't think anyone is actually offended, people are just mock-offended. Our sense of humour does use a lot of sarcasm that can be hard for outsiders to understand, especially in print on the internet :) I'm pretty sure every Australian man, woman and child is excited to see an Australian cake almost cause an EPCOT meltdown through John and Jen's scandalous desecration of our childhood memories.
My Mum still has that cake book with the Jelly pool and we are in the UK, I used to love looking through that book and choosing the cakes from it. I once made the guitar cake for one of my first boyfriends with the licorice lace strings , he didn't eat it, just kept it for ages in his room until it smelled. I wish I'd taken a picture, I have come on a long way since then.
Ooh, why don't you have a page where people can upload their old school birthday cakes that their mother made them copied from the famous Woman's weekly cake book, I expect I can find one or two in my Mums photo Album and upload them, I am sure she made the Train one also. ;)
HEY PEOPLE!!!! There are 6 other cakes to look at.
On the subject of # 2, it has been put into print, where an experienced baker (or Mom) produced it, therefore it shall be subject to ridicule &/or criticism.
Don't shoot the messenger!
I wouldn't eat it & I have been known to eat anything cake-like.
Lighten up peeps. We have all seen worse.
if you used blue jelly on the pool cake, it wouldn't look so bad. and it's not any worse than those "dirt" cakes with gummy worms that so many people here make. love the references to Zoolander, btw. my favorite movie.
I actually don't hate the 3rd one. It's kinda cute.
Can I just take a moment away from AustralianBakerGate to say that the giant tidal wave cake with ants surfing is, in fact, the most amazing Interstellar fan cake ever made?
Without this post, a lot of us who enjoy reading about food history might not have know about the AWW cookbook. Thanks for expanding our knowledge of world food just a little bit more !
Thank you Aussies for the cake-nostalgia! And for the Hemsworth brothers as well.
And a question about the "surfing for Ants" --is that a Zoolander reference? (That's what I heard--"What is this? A Cake for Ants???)
Well I'm Australian and by crikey I'm offended (I'd say bloody if I was allowed). That cake was made for me when I was six, when blue jelly/o didn't exist. I'm taking this up with the Prime Minister this Saturday at our national bi-annual meet-n-greet BBQ.
No one here is actually proud of Chip Lips though; you can go to town on that one.