Get Used To (More) Disappointment
March 29, 2017 What's that? You want more "Missed Marks" wrecks?
AS YOU WISH.
First up, Randee C. ordered this simple zebra-stripe cake from her local bakery:
;)
... and ended up with something only a finger-painting preschooler could love:
;)
Zebras of unusual stripes?
I don't think they exist.
Next, Tahneea made two notable discoveries: first, this gorgeous cake:
;)
There's a shortage of perfect ruffles in the world. 'Twould be a pity to damage yours.
And second, a use for leftover coffee filters!
"I do not mean to pry, but you don't by any chance happen to have six hundred coffee filters on hand?"
"Do you always begin conversations this way?"
"YUP."
And finally, Mel D. ordered this beauty for her wedding:
;)
She tells me her baker showed her an impressive portfolio of gorgeous cakes, which made the final reveal on her big day that much more, well, you know ...
;)
And ... EMBIGGIFY!
;)
On the plus side, that silver glitter really clumps together nicely.
Reader Comments (42)
Great. Now I'll have to go home after work and watch The Princess Bride. Not that I'm complaining.
"You mock their pain!"
"Wrecks are pain, and anyone who tells you differently is selling something."
That something? These cakes. Wow.
Well, I can't squeak for anyone else, but those little flowers on the last cake seem to be REACHING...(rather urgently, too, you ask meeeee....) with their little, "fingery" petals.....hoping SOMEONE will pluck them off before it's too late. Too late for what, you ask?
The innocence is - to borrow Jen's word- MIND-embiggifying!
=^-.-^=
Oh dear! I don't think I will be able to build up a resistance to these wrecks as Wesley did with the poisons.
The "zebra stripes" on the first wreck look like burn bacon.
Are these "bakeries" sub-contracting out their orders? Come ON! How are they staying in business?
To mesh in a Tarantino flick: Hello, my name is The Bride. You wrecked my cake. Prepare to die.
Saw Wally Shawn in a play (which he also wrote) last week. It was as good as mess #2, but not as bad as mess number one.
I fell victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is "never pay good money for a play before reading the reviews" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go in with a wreckerator when special events are on the line!"
I have no Princess Bride quips, but I will say that Missed Wedding Marks are my guilty pleasure. I love them so much that I know that I can never again get married (or at least do so with a cake), because I'm doomed to get the wreckiest of all wrecks.
Are we sure that is glitter in the "embiggified" photo? It looks like the start of a particularly virulent strain of mildew. Eeeew.
These are true wrecks. You think that happens every day?
(Judging by this blog, yes it does.)
Whoo hoo hoo....look who knows so much (I ❤ Miracle Max). Apparently these bakers know not so much. . If so, the zebra artist would know they sell zebra print cutters....and they make nice pretty zebra stripes! In addition I'm certain that I have seen in my own collection, these very perfect flower cutters, too! I have to have my CW fix everyday or I cannot sleep.
I couldn't eat the coffee filter cake, it just looks icky.
I am gobsmacked by that last one. :-O
Did the baker use beef jerky as the model for those zebra stripes??
Or maybe...it's IS beef jerky!
Ha! Watched the princess bride last night! Inconceivable! Do you suppose maybe some of the cakes 8n their portfolios are from when they had a better baker and now youre just getting whatever they could hire?
The best part of this is the prolific use of The Princess Bride quotes, analogies, and such. The worst part, obviously, is that someone is surprised that they didn't get what they expected.
PLEASE never stop using nerd humor in your blog. And never stop this blog. Please. Pretty please, with well-done fondant flowers on top.
ZOUSes! I love it!
Would you call the clam shell (ersatz coffee filters) cake ROAUS?*
*Ruffles of an Unusual Size
The coffee filter cake: It is a birthday cake, apparently, thoughtfully decorated with numerals that look as though they were intended for a house address. (Home Depot?) At the bottom it says, "Happy Birthday R...." I cannot make out the name. Which is very handy, because it means the cake could be resold to other 18-year-olds whose first name starts with "R" and who like to wear their birthday cakes like Easter bonnets.
Actually it's kind of practical that they used curtain rods on the last one. Just wash off the icing and you can hang the curtains in your new home.
Are those seriously actual coffee filters? Coated with frosting? That's appalling! Yikes!
Anybody who tried to offer me that last one, and expect me to PAY for the thing, I will see them in court.
If these things aren't the subject of legal action these weaklings deserve what they get.
Hi, long time reader first time poster. I always wonder what the bakeries say after being confronted with their terrible cakes. Specially the ones where they were shown a picture of a nice cake then created a mess.
Bye-bye Brides, have fun storming the bakeries!
Do you hear that sound, decorators? Those are the shrieking customers!
First wreck: Hey, at least it has the same number of tiers. As we have seen, they frequently don't.
Last wreck: What the baker failed to tell Mel D. is that the portfolio belonged to someone else. He found it left on a seat in the airport.
Princess Bride incorporation: WINNING!!!!!
I'm getting married in June and posts like these haunt my dreams. :-D
You know, the original ruffle cake is cute, but every time I see one of them, all I can think of is a baby's diaper cover... I think it's time to call in the Dread Pirate Roberts to take care of these bakers!
That's got to be beef jerky on wreck #1.
My mouth still looks like a chickens arse. Verily, the wrecks were stupendously wrecked
@Neeta: "Rachael". However the fact that the name is legible in no way makes it better.
My first thought when I saw the zebra cake - somebody sneezed with a mouthful of liquorice. Liquorice bogies!
And I both felt and heard my eyes bulge when I saw the last one. Just ... wow.
"Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam... And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva... So tweasure your wuv."
"Skip to the end."
Unfortunately, we skipped to the end and the dream was a nightmare!
Having never seen The Princess Bride, all those quotes fly right by me. Nevertheless, there is humor to be gleaned from the subject matter itself.
If a customer brings in a picture of her/his ideal cake and asks the baker to recreate it; well, accidents will happen (with high probability). But if the design comes from the baker's own book of designs s/he is offering; that is truly inexcusable. I am so glad that my late husband baked our little wedding Gugelhupf - it was perfect.
You keep using that "ruffle" word. I do not think it means what you think it means...
Repeat after me "Buttercream is not fondant, buttercream is not fondant, buttercream is not fondant,..."
See...it's posts like this that had me terrrrified about my wedding cake! And I even think I saw one of the cakes we'd considered on</> this site....which is part of the reason I ended up not going that route. I was sooo thankful when the baker we went with produced a gem of a cake. Now I can sit back and laugh with abandon at these wrecks!
Oh how I feel for the poor bride. Hopefully it tasted good despite looking scary as heck.
On the last one what really gets me is the bulging filling. Don't get me wrong. The flowers and everything else are terrible. I just can't stop looking at the bulging filling.
Wait... silver glitter??
::Goes back to photos::
Well tarnation, I thought that was just bad jpg artifacts from a low res. photo y'all received! Here is more evidence that one shouldn't eye a cake wreck and think, "I don't think that could be any fuglier!!"
Is glitter edible? I seriously don't know, but I DO KNOW that wouldn't give pause to the professional wreckerators.
PS I believe that is the first time in my 2 score and 9 that I've typed the word tarnation.
Hi Jen, Jen here :)
I work at a bakery in South Africa (Charly's Bakery) and that reference that was shown to Mel D is one of our cakes. I'm interested to know if Mel D is also South African or if there are some US bakers that are up to some nefarious advertising...
Thanks for giving us such quality content, never stop fighting the good fight!
Cakes like these bring to mind a study done two decades ago at Dartmouth. It turns out that some people are so incompetent they are too incompetent to understand they are incompetent! Make sense? Well it should with each passing week. Who puts these things in windows and ads without understand how really really really bad they are?! I think I'm at a point where, if I order a "Perfeshional" cake, I'ma gonna ask'em if they have a photo of one they made recently... Might save a lot of grief on the day of the big reveal!
Thanks Jen! You're a Gem!
Beth