The Displays That Time Forgot
November 20, 2008 Some people would have you believe that bakeries should update their window display cakes at least once a year or so. To this I say "pish tosh"! Why, check out these stellar examples, still sellin' the goods 10, even 15 years after they were made!
Wow, I don't know about you guys, but I am just itching for some cake right now. Or maybe just itching. Is that blood? Sweet!
(And before you ask, yes, I DO feel rather silly for censoring plastic boobs. Happy?)
Ah, nothing captures the essence of celebration quite like crumbling moldy icing and decapitated clown heads, am I right or am I right? Those customers will be pouring in any second now, I'm sure.
Or how about this one, sure to entice all the would-be brides out there:
Just ignore that fly on the top tier; he's been stuck there for a few weeks now, so we're pretty sure he's dead. Oh, and the flowers?
We call that color "perfect patina". It was inspired by the rusting water pipes in our basement. The dust really completes the look, don't you think?
Here's another one for the happy couple on their Big Day:
Ok, so the bride and groom's eyes have melted down their faces, and his hand has made a break for it down his leg. (Heh - "made a break for it") Even so, I have no doubt that the overall design of the bride huffily facing away from the groom and with her bags packed down below is a top seller.
UPDATE: Some of you have asked if all of these came from the same bakery. Nope! This lovely assortment represents *three* separate bakeries, and I believe all of them were open for business at the time. Ain't it great?
Thanks to Wreckporters Extraordinaire Monique R. and Melissa J.!
Reader Comments (164)
Wow. For some reason the word atrocious comes to mind.
I have to wonder also about what Amanda said. Is this from a closed and defunct bakery that just hasn't been cleaned out yet? I just have a hard time imagining that someone would leave something in the window THAT long. I guess anything is possible but EWWWWWWWWWWW.
I do believe this has added a whole new level to the wrecktastic world of bakeries and cakes gone wrong. And all of a sudden I don't feel so bad about my 2 week old leftovers in my fridge. =)
Okay, those are the most disgusting cakes I've ever seen! I'm curious too...was the bakery closed and out of business?? If not, that's just gross! Who would buy a cake from them???
Is this bakery in Chicago by any chance? Because I've seen plenty of bakeries in and around Chicago with exactly these kinds of display "cakes."
The only thing missing is the commercially-supplied posters taped up in the window that have long since been bleached varying shades of blue by the sun. YUM!
Are they props for a new Stephen King movie, The Cake Shop?
I hate clowns so I expected nothing less then gross form a cake with clowns on it.
How long do display cakes last, on average in a display window? Is there a town somewhere caught in some moldering time warp?
You should post a kitten before showing us these cakes. That's what Weasel does to warn us of wicked things coming our way.
You could have posted these cakes yesterday BEFORE I ate half of the leftover birthday cake.
wvotd: Fleca..."I see fly fleca on those cakes."
Nonetheless, keep up the good work.
Ooooh...yum! Would you like a slice of mouldered cake to go with your clotted milk? Heh, heh, heh...
~Amy B.
I so want that little plastic boobies doll! Everything else is a bit gross. I was hoping someone went nuts with green-brown airbrushing until I saw the first wedding cake with just a few decorations rotting away. Ugh.
I think I'm going to be sick :P
Ugh. I never knew cake could be so revolting.
GROSS!!! How do they get business with that crap in the window?
Mmmm... visual food poisoning.
Thanks for the memories---I've seen all those decorations on cake (sans the faceless bride and groom at the end) but I haven't seen them since probably 1991.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Apparently some people are still walking it.
All we need is Miss Haversham!
The faces on the bride/groom cake are not melting. The blue is from them crying their eyes out. Which would be appropriate given the content and construction of said cake.
omg, that's TERRIBLE!
That is so disgusting! The wedding cake with the green rusty flowers? EWW! And the second "wedding" cake looks more like a "sorry you're getting a divorce" cake, to me.
But any of them would make me RUN, not walk, away from the bakery.
BLECH!
I think I used those clown heads in my first cake decorating class 8 years ago!
Those are disgusting! (The real fly is a great touch...)
The word, ewwwwwwwwwww comes to mind. Maybe they were Halloween Haunted cakes? Sadly, I'm sure it was some old baker who smells of mothballs and made those in 1972.
jimandgarret.blogspot.com
-Garret-
These would be appropriate with a liitle sign in front that said:
"In memory of our dear departed little old lady cake decorator that passed away 20 years ago!"
Or something like that!
I wonder if really old cakes could be the cause of a storefront window fire?
That crazy lady from Great Expectations was Miss Haversham!!
That first cake has to be from this bakery in Brooklyn. I've passed it many times over the years. If it's not, then we have a duplicate out there and I will hunt it down and take pictures of it. I'm pretty sure that is the one though.
Just can't help wondering what those blotches of white are in the last one. I think it's my mind trying to think about something other than how revolting all of these are.
I wonder what the floor (window) model discount is...
I thought I was hungry . . .
I'm having flashbacks---I'm pretty sure my mother used similar clown heads on one of my brother's b-day cakes when we were kids. It explains a lot, actually....
Great blog. Keep 'em coming!
I'm glad a previous poster mentioned Miss Havisham. I've concluded that you need a whole subsection of superannuated, DOH-condemned cakes: Havisham Hall.
This reminds me of the episode of "Kitchen Nightmares" where Gordon found the stockroom completely overrun by roaches. I'm going to go throw up now. Thanks! ;-P
Those are hilarious! This is a really funny blog; like a lot of people, I too enjoy seeing professional things go horribly wrong, cakes included!
Anna Marie (Rusty, Bandit, and Smokey are my pets)
the top one looks like a rat has had a nibble!
they are so sick!
OHHHHH!!!! I LOVE THIS BLOG!!! And I love that those "cakes" exist (surely, we can all agree that this is a correct use of quotations), if only so that we can comment on them here and make me laugh so hard I scare the people around me. What those...things...really need is to be stamped with a huge sticker that says "You've just been wreckported to cakewrecks.com"
And fabulous Great Expectation references...
Happy Almost Friday~ Bonnie
Word Verification: Kinverma...ummm..I can't come up with anything on that one...
I'm digging that zombie bachelor party cake.
I can't believe anybody trying to sell a cake has these horrible wrecks on display! I mean, it makes for great viewing here but seriously, that has to be reverse advertising for a business. Hey look at us, we have awful cakes! Don't shop here!
I love this post! The other day I walked past a bakery in my neighborhood, and like a good aspiring 'Wrecker, I checked out the cakes in the window. I got excited for a second by what I thought was poor execution and even worse spelling, but when I looked closer I realized it was just cracking with age and several of the letters had fallen off.
Now I realize that neglect can produce wrecks, too! I'm off to take some pictures!
P.S. Don't know about the cakes in this post, but the ones I saw were in the window of a bakery that is open. Doesn't do much business though - wonder why?
I distinctly remember those clowns from an old family birthday photo. Just the kind of thing my grandmother bought... in the late '80s.
Blechh!!
No, Rapunzel, sorry, that's not correct. It really is Miss Havisham. You could look it up.
Ho-lee CRAP! (Crap being the operative word here...)
Are those all at the same place?
And, I don't understand the appeal of the dust-colored frosting and the plastic stuff on top? Even if these all look that way because it IS dust, I've seen this look elsewhere, and it is surreal to me that these are cakes, and someone thought this was an attractive juxtaposition to FOOD.
icky
The one with the fly would have looked okay if it was fresh. As it is; bleurgh.
It's like Mrs. Havisham's house in Great Expectations!
I'm gonna have nightmares now...
Hahaha! You said his hand make a break for it. That made snort!
That is almost enough to make me swear off eating cake forever!!! There should be a warning on this post. haha.
Can't sleep, clowns will eat me...
Any day now Stephen King is going to write either a short story OR a book that explains these wrectastic kakes. I think these belong in the Halloween category.
The clown kake(wreck) REALLY, REALLY creeps me out. I can just imagine:
The clock strikes midnight. The clowns PULL themselves up out of the moldy/fly dung speckled icing and go in search of... HUMANS to torture, suck blood or.. well. I think I've taken this line of thought as far as I care to!!
Awesomely gross and very, very scary!
Are these all because you said you'd like to see a Great Expectations wedding cake???
Not the cakewreck post one wants to read when scarfing down a salad...ugh. On a more positive note, perhaps the "cake-acyllin" and "amoxicing" can be used to fight diseases and cure strep throat. Much more soothing than those nasty capsules!
To Graham: As to the "Haversham" "Havisham" question--I wasn't trying to correct anyone; when I wrote "that was Miss Haversham!", it was in response to the person who mentioned the crazy lady in Great Expectations. I actually googled "Haversham" because I couldn't remember how it was spelled and got responses. I should have researched further.
ugh! that is NASTY!!!
Why would a bakery do this to itself???
"And before you ask, yes, I DO feel rather silly for censoring plastic boobs."
Then don't do it.
Censorship is self-tyranny.