Blog / Cake Wrecks

Cake Wrecks is a blog devoted to the collection of pictures of astoundingly ugly, poorly-made, or otherwise entertaining professionally-made cakes. Jen and John Yates, the married couple who run the blog, collect user-submitted photos and make a new post containing one or more cakes every day except Saturday. Sundays are devoted to "Sunday Sweets", cakes which are actually well-crafted and attractive, as an antidote to the weekday hideousness.

In the words of Jen, "A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate — you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places."

Think of it as MSTing with baking.

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This website provides examples of:

• Accidental Pun: Some of the bakers create punny cakes without themselves even knowing! For one example, a customer asked for a cake decorated with a "a black high heel", as in a shoe; what they got was "a black high hill", as in a mountain - some comments speculated that the customer had a strong Southern US accent where "hill" and "heel" would sound identical.
• Acquired Error at the Printer: One of the most frequent types of error. Here is just one example.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: A cake congratulating a girl on her first period might be appreciated, if said reason wasn't written on it. "The fact that "period" is spelled wrong pales in comparison with, you know, everything else."
• Artistic License – Biology: Most of the cake depictions of humans and animals are anatomically impossible.
  "Last I checked, turtles don't walk around facing the sky."
• Artistic License – Sports: The writers admit they know very little about sports. Some of the wreckerators know even less.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: With a dash of Covert Pervert:
  "We've all been there: you order something special, wait weeks for it to arrive, and then discover the hard way that you're allergic to latex. Dang it.
  My point is, we've all faced disappointment. And itchiness. But mostly disappointment."
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Sadly averted with some cakes shaped like unappealing body parts.
• Berserk Button:
  • Jen really HATES cupcake cakes.
  • Looks like edible photo paper is becoming good at pressing the old Berserk Button, too.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Jen's New Year's Resolutions for 2011.
  This year I resolve to: Eat more fruits and vegetables. Cut down on my caffeine intake...Take responsibility for my mistakes - even the itty-bitty ones that no one else would ever really notice. Learn Esperanto. So I can be more like Captain Kirk. And finally, stop selling babies on the black market.
• Continuity Nod: It's not uncommon for posts to link to previous Wrecks of a related nature.
• Deadpan Snarker: Both Jen and her hubby John, who provide the commentary.
• The Ditz: Some of the bakers, evidently. It's the only explanation for some of the entries.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The entire "Do You See What I See?" tag. Numerous cakes come out not looking quite like the baker intended, notably the "turkey poo-wang" cakes.
• Epic Fail: A regular occurrence. Especially when a cake ends up inedible, for some reason.

• Food Porn: Many of the Sweets. Some of the Wrecks could be considered Food Gorn, particularly the one that caught fire and melted — in front of Kerry Vincent (called the Simon Cowell of cakes, as in the one judge you do not want to mess up in front of).

• Gag Penis: The space shuttle cake looks like one, albeit unintentionally so. Some cakes actually are supposed to be shaped like penises, and are almost always censored unless they're made so badly they're unrecognisable.
• Giftedly Bad: Most of the featured bakers turn out some remarkably horrific-looking cakes.

• Irony: This back-to-school cake that was filled with bad spelling errors.

• Least Rhymable Word:
  • Orange in this Sunday Sweets post.
  • Muscle in this post.
• Leg Focus: This cake, which has six gartered legs wearing with red shoes on their feet.
• Let's Meet the Meat: The lamb in this post certainly doesn't seem too distressed about being made into chops...
• Literal-Minded:
  • Another common trait of wreckerators, as shown in this infamous example in which they write in the directions as well.
  • Many wreckerators have been presented with an image of a cake similar to the one that the customer wanted, only to take the picture too literally and print the picture onto the cake with edible paper. Example here.

• The Mockbuster: Parodied here, with photos of cakes made of several Disney characters, none of which turned out particularly well.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer:
  • One post featuring long-neglected, disgusting-looking display "cakes" (styrofoam iced up to show off the decorators' skill) had to clarify that they were all from bakeries that were still in operation. (For now.)
  • "Over in Things That Actually Exist, here's the 'One Direction Chart Topping Cupcake Kit'"
• Only in Florida: This entry is dedicated to wacky headlines starring that lovable scamp known as Florida Man.
• Overly Literal Transcription: documented an alarming number of supposedly professionally-decorated cakes with icing spelling out what appear to be either customers' exact words or written instructions:
  • Write "Welcome" on it
  • The #25 in Big Font
  • Happy Birthday Sara Minus H
• Overly-Long Gag: Twenty-two individual choking opportunities.
• Poor Communication Kills: Many wrecks are the result of phone orders. Case in point: the memory stick.

• Pungeon Master: Jen and John are unapologetic about the volume of puns in their writeups.
• A Rare Sentence: These occur from time to time.
  Side note: The words "cake" and "ankle stumps" should never, EVER, be used to describe the same thing.
• Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: A lot of cakes, including the one that started it all...
• Rouge Angles of Satin: Sometimes the cake writing ends up like this.
  • Happy Birthday Cole U R My Angle
  • Here's Your Dam Cake
• Running Gag: "I want sprinkles", the "naked mohawk-baby carrot jockeys" (which is now part of the site's main banner!) and Epcot. (If a wreckerator asks for an image to be taken down, it is typically replaced with a stock image of Epcot.)
• Serial Escalation: Just when you think the cakes can't get any dumber or uglier, they do.
• Shmuck Bait: From a Sunday Sweets post highlighting Doll Cakes:
  "...Ok, time for another history lesson, because after wading through an entire internet of surprisingly creepy Cabbage Patch Kid cakes (Do. Not. Google.), I found one that is utterly adorable..."
• Shout-Out:
  • To The Big Bang Theory, the bazinga post.
  • LOLCats has been referenced a few times.
• Spell My Name with an S: Names get misspelled in some pretty impressive ways, the best one probably being this one.
• Squee: How Jen often responds to the cakes in the weekly Sunday Sweets post. Actually said verbatim here and here.
• invoked Squick: Many time the photos sent and commented are extremely disgusting. At times readers are advised to have a bucket prepared. See this post — one of the cakes had a pair of scissors in it.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: In this entry about a wedding cake that appears to have sperm decorations. "Roses are red/And cake can be pretty./How sad for you,/'Cuz yours looks all.../[eyeing children]/...unpleasant.
• Take Our Word for It: "You, Too, Can Have Teletubby Poo" includes photo to illustrate an incredibly blue cake, another showing the way it stained everything and...
  Step 3: Wait for Mother Nature's call. Enjoy this foray into the world of technicolor poo.
  [PHOTO REMOVED] (You're welcome.)
• Teen Pregnancy: The "Congrats on your teen pregnancy" cake.

• They Just Don't Get It: Many of the bakers. Also, every time baby shower cakes are featured, someone in the comments will ask if Jen and John are "trying to tell us something", even though both Jen and John have made posts about having had their tubes tied.
• Threatening Shark: Shark-Attack Cupcake ... Mountain? Some cupcakes have a shark while others have severed limbs or plain open seas.
• Trivially Obvious: "1 Dad." Not "#1 Dad", just a dad.
• Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: Quotation marks seem to suffer the most, e.g. the mildly worrying "Thanks For Being Our 'Dad'."

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