Thursday
Aug212014
Picture This
August 21, 2014 So Shawna A. asked her bakery to make a cake just like this one from Pink Cake Box:
;)
To make it easier, she even brought in a print-out of this picture. And, since she wanted her cake to say "Welcome Little Monkey" instead of "Happy Birthday," she was sure to cross that bit out. That way, there could be no confusion whatsoever, right?
Riiiight.
;)
All in favor of banning the edible photo printer for all eternity, say "Oy VEY."
I think the "veys" have it, Shawna.
*****
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Reader Comments (55)
I'm assuming that the giant dog whisker on the bottom was no extra charge.
Oy vey.
I would sure like to hear the conversations that lead to these catastrophes. It must be a telephone game-type problem. Someone takes the order, they tell the head baker, who tells the head decorator...
Oy vey indeed.
We would be a healthier nation if we were to stop placing pictures ON TOP of cakes, and simply serve up photos of entire cakes. All of the cakes would be exactly as we want them to be AND the amount of fat and sugar in said cakes would be greatly reduced.
You're welcome, America.
Oh, I thought that the giant dog whisker was actually a pointer to draw attention to the fact that the decorator indeed did not include the birthday greeting, just as requested. Just following orders, eh?
I guess the requirement for getting a job decorating cakes is a degree specializing in "Obtuse 101".
AngelaS: it immediately reminded me of the same game: the first person whispers "I would like a piece of cake,", and the last person hears "I want to take a road trip through Mel's brain and find out how he thinks the way he does, and how does Sharyn always come up with such fantastic song parodies anyway?"
Holy Oy Vey...
how in heck do you manage to create that wreck?
I do keep hearing about the dumbing down of America. There must be something to it.
@Rachel CrazyMum - I LOVE that game!
The second to last person says, ""I want to take a road trip through Mel's brain and find out how he thinks the way he does, and how does Sharyn always come up with such fantastic song parodies anyway?" and I hear "Happy Falker Satherhood."
Rachel CrazyMum, I think Sharyn was raised on "Mad Magazine".
On a positive note, everything is spelled correctly and legible....
I'm extremely very sorry, but stuff like this doesn't make me laugh, it makes me angry. How can a baker (or anyone who functions in the world) be that...what? Dumb? Clueless? Lazy? Uncaring? Shiftless? Unaware? Apathetic? Dumb is the nicest thing you can say about them, because otherwise they are doing it by choice, which makes me despair.
OY VEY!!!!
Sung to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”
“Picture this cake with a brand new inscription
Just write “Little Monkey,” for a sweet surprise.”
Asked “Do you like it?” you answer quite slowly…
“That’s edible paper, you guys…”
“I brought the picture for reference!” you scream.
Pressure builds up in your head.
Girl at the counter just rolls up her eyes
And she says…
“Look, we got the ri-ight alignment…”
“Look, we got the ri-ight alignment…”
“Look, we got the ri-ight alignment…”
“So…..”
*******
Offspring started high school today. How is this possible?
Have I been following this site too long if I'm just relieved that the monkey was holding A banana, and not HIS banana?
OK, I understand that some bakers may not speak English as a first language, or may not have college(grade school *cough*) educations under their belts. But in what world does it make sense that a customer would want a picture of a cake on their cake??
...sorry, forgot for a moment where I was. :P
Oy vey!
Picture on my cake
Came from a stupid baker
With a low IQ.
Don’t you just hate it when the bakers monkey around with a cake? No doubt Shawna went ape when she saw this. Her blood musta been boiling, or at least simian….
And I’ve heard this is true,
As strange as it seems,
A man once bought the first cake
For the gorilla his dreams.
@Rachel CrazyMum: lol…it’s be short trip…not much up there….
Oh, and the writing looks so nice on this one -- and no misspellings! What a shame
@Amy -- no, I don't think that is it. I, too, was raised on Mad Magazine and I can't do those song parodies that @Sharyn does. It is just her special kind of super power, I think.
At least the baker could spell "Welcome Little Monkey" correctly, which probably dried up all his or her brain power and left nothing for creating the image.
Oy VEY!
The Cake Game (loosely based on “The Name Game,” by Shirley Ellis
Cake!
Cake! Cake, cake, we’re gonna make a fake! Cake!
Bake, bake, and then we’ll wreck…Cake!
Monkey!
Monkey, monkey, bo fanna with a banana
Fe fi fo funky monkey!
Come on everybody!
Let’s give it a shake
I betcha I can make a wreck out of anybody's cake
I take their request, I treat it like it wasn't there
And an edible print of their drawing will appear
And then I say H add a hair then I say Shawna and Bonana fanna and
fo
And then I put the picture off to the right
add my fee and a little mo
And then I write in big letters, what the heck
And there isn't any cake that I can’t wreck!
Cake!
Cake! Cake, cake, we’re gonna make a fake! Cake!
Bake, bake, and then we’ll wreck…Cake!
Mel: "it’s be short trip"??? You've been reading CW for too long! I don't mind if it's a short trip, I'll just go round several times. Anything to escape from my own mind... ^_^
Cannot comprehend the level of stupid-methinks evolution is goig backwards... O_o
@Maureen: I am the same way, that totally IS Sharyn's super power!
@SaraCVT:ROFL, that was a good one. However cynical...we can still always be hopeful!
@Nancie: I understand your frustration, but I learned a LOOOONG time ago, you cannot change what OTHER people do, only YOUR REACTION to it. If you choose (yes, it's a CHOICE) to see these as humorous, you will lower your blood pressure, have a laugh, and you may feel much better. You may not be able to change what these people do, but really, life is too short to get angry about it, the people who send in these photos are usually over their anger by the time they send them in I'm sure. You CAN do your part and educate people about how horrible misspelling people's cakes are, and you should. But, you cannot possibly go around the country giving spelling tutorials to every cake decorator in the country-that's absurd right? So you may as well laugh about it and let it go.
@SuBee: Can we make the paper that rice paper that melts in your mouth? Because wood pulp is much too harsh for my delicate constitution...<snort>
@mel: GROAN...
To reference the great Uncle Buck....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GGL3oCZkyY -
There's just no excuse for such primate behavior!
For some reason I've got the image of the cake with the unicorn guy on it stuck in my head. You guys know which one I'm talking about! So, you know, it could be worse.
I still give an Oy Vey to this though!
@Sharyn ~ 12 more days!!!
@mel ~ Your mind is a fabulous playground and we're all glad you chose to play here!
You said "Satherhood"
and I heard "Life-size Lenin
with poison bon-bons."
Perhaps the baker was cleverly getting around the copyright issue that would surely have been caused by copying another bakery's work.
"Yo dawg, I heard you liked cake so I put a cake on your cake so you can eat cake while you're eating cake."
And it's not even a difficult cake design to reproduce!!! Ugh.
This reminds me of something that happened to my mom recently, and not in a good way. She had this skirt, that was part of a suit. She wanted some of the skirt waist taken in because it was too big. She took it to the tailor at the dry cleaner, tried it on, and he pinned it. She gets it back, and it turns out he decided to just take it in on one side. So, now, yes the skirt is the right width. But it is all wonky. He only took in one side, now the seams are no longer on her hips, nor is the zipper in the middle anymore. Also, he took in the outside fabric, but not the inside fabric. Basically, he destroyed her suit. We bring it back to the dry cleaner, and they offer to try to fix it, and if not, they will reimburse her for another suit of similar value. Nothing to lose, we leave it there.
Well, wouldn't you know it the guy fixed it.
This shows us that he had the talent and the know how. He was just lazy, and apathetic, and didn't think we would care, or notice, or I don't even know what. I find this site hilarious, and often laugh out loud funny. But it is really sad to see that these things happen so frequently. Either people are just too stupid for words, or too lazy and apathetic, and I am not sure which one is worse.
I think I know how this happened. The customer walks in with the picture and says, "This is a picture of a design that I want on my cake." Right at the moment customer starts talking, there's a huge sonic boom from the Blue Angels flying over and the decorator misses the "of the design" part and hears, "This is a picture ... I want on my cake."
It could happen. Maybe. Otherwise I don't understand what is going on in the world anymore.
As a grocery store cake decorator, the edible image has saved me time and made some pretty awesome cakes on numerous occasions. This, however, is not how you do it.
Oy vey!
Can we just go full on yiddish insults at the baker (going masculine pronouns)?
When G-d was doling out brains, he was asleep.
He looks with his eyes, listens with his ears, and understands like a wall.
If he were twice as smart, he'd be an idiot!
Morons.. Smh
Well, this looks like it was ordered from a grocery store with no
Access to fondant. People come to me with their smart phones
And all these pictures of cakes they want. I just shake my head,
Smile and say "Honey, we don't do that here". I tell them to go to
Find a regular bakery downtown, pay three times as much because that's
What they're worth and enjoy the cake! I don't know where this one came
From, but I know all the grocers I've worked for don't supply their
Decorators with the supplies to do anything out of the ordinary. Some days I just count myself lucky I
Have a working airbrush... Lol
I ordered a baby shower cake a few years ago and when I went to pick it up, it was entirely topped by edible paper. I had been so excited about the cake and I was so upset when I saw it. But what can you do at that point? I feel like a baker should ask if you want something on edible paper or not, same as they ask buttercream or fondant.
I'm not sure what all the fuss is about? It is EXACTLY what she wanted, there is no Happy Birthday on it, it's been thoroughly crossed out, the monkey looks darn near what she wanted, maybe add more cerulean to the printer, not sure if that'll work, but couldn't hurt (you wanted a blue monkey right?). You said it was an homage to a cake from the Pink a Cake Fox, so we added in a little dog hair (pink fox are hard to come by, and what a silly name for a bakery... Ohhhhh BOX, yeah that makes more sense). I'm not mad at this cake, but I didn't order this cake. If I had ordered this cake the "edible" photo would have my tears on it. I know that when I'm planning an event I am looking for perfection, and this isn't quiiiiiiiiiittte right. The customer would have been better off cutting the monkey out and laying the paper on the plain, white sheet cake:)
As usual, my cake wreck genius' have made my day, I'm glad to see that carpool didn't take too long and SuBee and mel will tide me over until haiku joy gets here, my snapping fingers are ready for her to drop the beat:)
This site is excellent for my self esteem, because I am so much smarter than these bakers, and for the really wrecky ones, more talented, but it is also good for my giant ego, because I realize that I have to work a lot harder to be as witty as my fellow commenters:)
OK, that is a dumb solution, but I just want to say in defense of grocery store decorators that some customers have very unreasonable expectations. They want a Charm City Cakes masterpiece from Safeway at the Safeway price. Grocery store decorators are generally high school kids who can make the cakes in the store's catalog. If you want something more creative, go to a professional baker and ask to see samples of their work. The better and more creative a decorator's work, the more you'll have to (and should) pay.
It just occurs to me- maybe somewhere out there, there is a universally distributed corporate manual for grocery store bakery department employees that says, "always do EXACTLY what the customer tells you - ask no questions"
this might explain A LOT in terms of wreckery!
As soon as I read "she even brought in a print-out of this picture" I just knew they'd done a print of the model picture, but they even found a way to botch that plan with a terrible, washed-out, under-sized print-out....*gack* I'm calling a double-fail on this one!
They'd have been better off leaving out the photo & just doing a plain inscription.
Lazy. Simply lazy. Oy Vey!
Oy vey.
That is all.
Yo dawg, I heard you liked cakes...
@Rachel CrazyMum: lol…that was mess…I think you’re right – maybe time to retire from this…or maybe that’s just proof that there really isn’t much up there…and short trip – it’s not worth getting into the car for….. (I fired the prof-readir!) :-)
@VaBeach alemaP: a GROAN…the punultimate compliment!
@Jodee: thanks…oh, it’s a playground, but I think I’ve spent too much time on the merry-go-round…
@Camille, on behalf of cake-buyers everywhere I would like to say thank you. So, "thank you!"
Well....the writing is nice!
I guess I don't understand why the bakery wouldn't just say "we can't do that here."
In defense of the customer, most folks have never tried to decorate a cake and have no idea how hard some of these things are.
Yes @Camille
I would rather have someone be honest & say "We can't do that" than end up with some godawful wrecky attempt.
I bet she is at least glad to have taken a colour print!
It could have been worse!
But were most of the bakers/decorators at the end of the brains queues?
LOVE the blog.
I have to say, this really would annoy me. Can you imagine having to show up at a party with a cake like that when you are expecting something closer to the first one. Specially if you are the godmother or a family member who wants to make sure that the mom to be has a great day.
Monkey see, monkey do
Monkey paper you can't chew
Monkey picture just for reference
Monkey frosting is my preference
Monkey baker understand?
Not the smartest in the land
Monkey welcome little one
Monkey baker now you're done