Icing on the cake – Liz’s rant

NOTE: As our beloved Kate is still taking care of a family emergency, I decided to re-run one of my favorite posts which features one of my go-to websites – the site I frequent whenever I need a good laugh. Oh sure. I could’ve given you a super simple recipe.  But Kate is the queen of our recipes as you all know. So in her honor this week, we’re gonna laugh about other people’s bakery botches.

My brother and his wife are expecting baby no. 2 in the next few weeks, (OK – update. Baby Franklin is 3 1/2 months old, now) so needless to say, baby showers are in the air, as it were.

In fact, my sister-in-law’s office gave her a shower just last week. As far as I know, there was only one problem with the shower: the cake said Welcome Baby, which is all well and good, but it was followed by the family’s last name – which was spelled wrong. Or, let’s just say, it had been spelled wrong at some point along the cake decorating way. Yep, you could see where at one point there’d been a  capital r, which had been scraped off and replaced with a capital w.

I  presume such errors would be a cake decorator’s nightmare. Like the cake falling or the icing turning grainy. As nightmarish as these mistakes may be, though, apparently cake flubs are more prevalent than any of us would like to imagine.

My proof? Enter a great website: Cake Wrecks! This site is loaded with evidence that there are as many ways to screw up a cake as there are colors in the rainbow.

Oh sure, sometimes words are mis-spelled or phrases make no sense whatsoever.

Or there’s this one – which is one of my favorites:

Congratulations and Happy… um…. WHAT?!?!

But that’s not the only faux pas in the bakery. Sometimes the design itself is enough to make one cringe. For all you University of Kentucky fans, you no doubt know UK’s mascot, the wildcat. He looks like this:

Unless, of course, the wrong person is put in charge of the design. In that case, your cake might look like this:

Can’t see the resemblance, can ya?

Would that it were the worst of the cake fails. (OK, I’ll admit it does rank up there with some of the worst…)

Among the other baking boo-boos are those designers who apparently take things way too seriously for their own good – following decorating directions to the tee – without pausing to think that some things are best left unsaid. I’ve told you people for quite some time that without incorporating a good dose of common sense, we’re in deep doo-doo. Now, I offer proof:

Let’s see. What have we just learned? Well, Peter has a nut allergy and Adam… well … poor Adam.

At this point, I know you’re chomping at the bit to check out more cake fiascos.

Since you’re heading over to Cake Wrecks anyway, might I suggest you start on this page.

Kinda makes you want to visit a bakery near you, doesn’t it? Just be sure to take a camera…

-Liz