Saturday, August 9, 2008
Ode to Irony
Saturday, August 9, 2008
This is poetry in frosting, folks. In fact, I think I feel a Haiku coming on…
Sweet tasting mistakes,
Such standards for our children:
Weep for our future.
Thanks to Monique R., one of my dedicated "Wreckporters", for the pic.
Search This Blog
Wreck the Halls
NEW! Pre-Order Today!
Amazon
|
Barnes & Noble
Borders |
IndieBound
Buy the Book
Buy the NYT Bestseller
What's a Wreck?
What's a Wreck?
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.
Now, don't you have a photo you want to send me? ;)
tabs
- Fan Faves
- The Classics
The Classics
Awards
Praise for the Book
- “Will have you laughing so hard you’ll forget to eat!”— Washington Post
- “a hilarious winner” — The Oregonian
- “a fantastically gut-busting book”— NPR
- “It’s all here, each wreck a disaster of hilarity.” — BookPage.com
- “Hysterically funny!”— Epinions.com
- “laugh-out-loud funny”— The Times
- “Yates’ sharp humor makes the funny even funnier.” — The Dallas Morning News
- “an amazing laugh-out-loud book”— The Book Triblog
What the fans are saying
- "I was laughing so hard, I couldn't catch my breath."
- "As funny as the blog that started it."
- "WAY better than I expected!"
- "Cake Wreckery at its best!"
- "Wrecktastic!"
Awards
- American Mensa:Top 50 Websites of 2010
- Amazon: Top 10 gift books of 2009
- The Orlando Sentinal “Orbbies”: Winner Humor
- 2009 BlogLuxe Awards: Funniest Blog
- 2009 Bloggies: Best Writing of a Weblog, Best New Weblog, Best Food Blog
- The 2008 Weblog Awards: Best Food Blog
- Blogger's Choice 2008 Awards: Best Humor Blog
order
Where's the book?
We don’t have any copies of Cake Wrecks for sale here, autographed or otherwise. We decided the shipping and handling costs would be too high to make it worth your while. So instead, buy your copies locally or online and then order personalized bookplates: it’s cheaper, easier, and I think even looks a bit nicer.
Ordering Info
Payments must be made through Paypal, which accepts all major credit cards. Sorry, but that means no checks or MOs or barter-based chickens.
We ship everything first class USPS, and will do our best to have your package in the mail within 2 days of your order.
Popular This Month
Popular This Month
Archives
-
▼
2008
(232)
-
▼
August
(26)
- You, Too, Can Have Teletubby Poo
- Dial-A-Wreck
- Boobs!
- Meet the Snark Behind the Curtain
- Cake Writing 101: The Art of Spacing
- The Readers Have Spoken
- When Hunter/Decorators Bake
- Sweet Baby James
- Cakes For All Occasions
- A Magical Bakery Tour
- In Memory
- Why Are the Children Screaming?
- Celebrity Wrecks
- "Cake" Cruelty
- Gosh, Kermit, I Think I'd Get That Looked At...
- This Calls for a Celebration!
- I Believe the Children are Our Future
- In Honor of the 2008 Olympic Games
- Play It Again, Wrecks.
- Ode to Irony
- Extra Terrible
- Cake for a Cat-Lover
- FHOTD, This One's For You
- What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate
- Proof That Shameless Begging Works
- Cake Wreckin' Under-Achievers, Unite!
-
▼
August
(26)
51 comments | Post a Comment
Uh, yeah...This is indeed the state of modern public education. Ironically it is the "standards" that have so mutilated the quality of education. Often times a teacher's creativity is squelched by having to adhere to the almighty standards. This begins in preschool. Let us not only weep, but pray for the future...
Oh...hey, where did that soapbox come from??? Sorry folks!
I think those mutant starfish looking things are suppose to be hibiscus flowers...
I'm also scared that they couldn't even get graders correct. I assume it should be that anyway instead of 6th Grades.
scary cupcake cake
ugly airbrush, mithspelled words
hope the cake tastes good
;) Wendy
One of the best haiku I have ever read. I would love it on a cake.
Just have to say I love your posts! Funnier every day,
Maybe this decorator charges by the letter, and although the kids collected dimes to pay for the cake they still came up a few letters short???
Wow- poor spelling, not very attractive beach, and what on earth is with the two ginormous flowers? Oh, wait- this must the the alien planet that the teacher is wishing her students were on! What other explanation is there? Where else can you find flowers floating on sand that are the size of palm trees? I keep looking back at the picture, expecting the flowers to have grown even more until they take over the cake!
Carrie B.
You know, besides the spelling errors, this is a fairly well executed cupcake-cake.
Ah, Penis Palms. Brings back such memories of middle school.....
Maybe it was written by one of the fifth graders...
It used to make me shudder to read the handouts and flyers my kids would bring home from grade school. The grammar and syntax and punctuation errors were abundant, the wrong words that spell checker couldn't catch were many.
Happily, the number of such errors decreased when they progressed to middle and high school.
The island of wrecked cakes....
i love it! my friend just e-mailed me your blog link and it felt nice to just sit back and have a good laugh this morning. as a mother of two - most of my laughs are at myself as i realize my total inability at doing anything right... but these posts help me realize there are people out there worse than me. and that just makes me smile. :)
As a sixth grade teacher, I love this cake! It really reflects a teacher's state of mind on that last day of school.
To think what kind of an education those poor sixth graders went through if their teacher (for I assume authorities ordered this cake) can't even spell 'Farewell' right, or do something if the cake decorator mis-spells it...
Apparently, it was the last grade that the decorator made it through.
Is this the latest trend in cakes - to put a bunch of cupcakes together and frost them as if it were a cake? A way to heap even MORE frosting on a small portion of cake? I haven't seen this in person, and wondered if it was a regional thing.
Is this a cake you give to someone when their 6th grade education is somehow revoked?
Or does it mean "Congratulations, now you're smart enough never to work for these cheap idiots!"?
The cake is messed up because the cake shop owner would rather have an automatically opening and closing trunk in his new Mercedes than pay for cake decorators who can actually spell.
OMG - as a comment to your entire blog, I'll tell you I haven't been laughing this hard for quite a while. Hilarious! Thank you for some great entertainment - if I remember I'll let people know about you on my own blog! :)
On the plus side, it's a very pretty cake! And hey, teaching opportunity!
"Write down your corrections for the text on this cake. Whoever fixes all mistakes first gets the first piece."
Yikes! As a teacher, it would take all of my power not to correct the cake somehow...
Oh, I like the idea of a "teaching opportunity" !!! That is a great idea. Wish I had thought of that when I misspelled stuff on the marquee when my boys were in elementary. I wrote: "Congrations Spelling Bee Champ, Stephen A."
Oh my, this is all just too funny! I love it!
http://blueoverture.blogspot.com
It could be the grammar question of the day... fix this sentence...
They still let people bring sweets into school? Last I checked, they were banned at my old elementary and middle schools. I'm for it, but I would miss the occasional cupcake in the kid's shoes.
OMG. The future of our country. LOL !!!!!!!!!!
At first I thought it said "Farvel" and what the heck are those green thingies springing up at the base of the penis-palm trees?
Never mind. I like the sky and sand effect.
I think this is one of the scariest cakes you've had.. a vision of the future - be afraid - be very afraid!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)
Actually it's not a badly-executed cake. The airbrushing and palm trees are decent. Yellow should've been used under the brown to get a more sandy effect, and the mutant hibiscus should've been a different color (hot pink, for instance), but other than that...
Ye Gods. How do people get away with such basic spelling mistakes? Doesn't a manager notice these things before a cake is given to a customer?
Re the "cupcake cake" -- it's a fairly new trend, the premise being that it's easier for everyone to get his/her own cupcake rather than wrestle with knives and uneven slices. This particular design is one of the nicer ones I've seen.
I feel sorry for the parents of the children who got the cupcakes directly underneath the flowers. That is A LOT of sugar!
found your site by chance. hilarious. but isn't it DISCRETION, not DESCRETION?
This is the best blog in the world ever. Actually, it might be the best THING in the world ever. My stomach hurts from laughing. Thank you so much for existing.
@fatboybrakes:
It took me a minute to figure out where I'd even USED the word "discretion" - lol. You of course are correct, sir: good catch. Thanks!
Just discovered this site the other night and I still have not stopped laughing. I sent it on to my family and friends. Keep up the fantastic work!
Not only is this an annoying cupcake cake, and a mis-spelled/improper grammar cake - it's a bad color cake, and an over-zealous airbrusher cake! I think this would be called a quad-fecta, yes?
Cupcakes and cupcake cakes are the new "hot" cake--they're in every food magazine now! I got two last year for my DH's birthday (we are sans a "real" bakery here). They were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Spiderman themed, haha--when I went to pick it up, the decorator was like, "Are these for your son?"...and I was like, "No, my 25 year old husband..." :p
I make this cake at work!
Of course, I am also capable of spelling basic words, like "farewell."
And yes, I do make the large mutant flowers on it (in yellow), because that's the design template the company gives us to follow. Unless the customer specifies, that's what's in the picture and that's what we have to make.
http://community.livejournal.com/mock_the_stupid/2987769.html
This post reminded me of this site.
Did the cake decorator give you a spelling lesson? :p Just kidding! Love the blog, keep it up!!!
your haiku is flippin hysterical!
I think the cake decorator needs to repeat the 6th grade until they can spell.
So the fact that I had to read it three times before I realized the mistakes says a little too much about me, doesn't it? So funny.
Your haiku is actually pretty wonderful.
Do the students get extra credit if they point out the mistake?
I'm hungry...I'd settle for a farewel cupcake!
Another FHOTDer - and I'm already hooked! Great stuff!
JOSI - no, no - you're SMARTER for having a brain that automatically corrected what your eyes saw.....stick with that story! LOL!
I just don't get the idea behind making cupcakes look like a giant cake. I'd much rather bake one large cake (and wash one single pan) than have to bake with a bunch of little cupcakes (and wash numerous muffin tins).
Sly - I *THINK* it's to make cutting the cake easier. Basically, we're all supposedly so lazy, we just want to pull the cake apart, forget having to bust out the knife! LOL!
Have to comment on the "topper"... You did post a work in progress which is not cake btw but polymer clay. It is not life-size but only 12" tall and it was for a sweet 16 birthday. If you'd like to see the finished product on the cake go to http://www.weddingsculptures.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=83&Itemid=2 or http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizabethbonura/2557536664/in/set-72157602286723682/
~Elizabeth (yes, I did sculpt both of the portraits... out of CLAY) htp://www.weddingsculptures.com
This is what you present to the kids as proof that you need to stay in school. If you drop out.. you could end up doing something like this!
Hey, that cake was at our church! You can see it here: http://sandyssayings.typepad.com/sandys_sayings/2008/05/another-cake-is.html#comments
Oh my gosh, I actually LAUGHED at that one! Not that the other cake wrecks aren't funny, but that was the first one scrolling down your first page that make me emit vocalizations. LOL!
...
I love the way things work.
Richard Mitchell, brilliant commentator on education said it thusly:
"Minimum competency testing will ensure precisely that."
Be very careful what you wish for.
-mo
i like this CCC... in concept. The postage stamp like framing inherent in all CCCs works well on a farewell cake.
The spelling errors and the mutant starfish (which i'm consistently seeing as maple leaves, despite the palm tree background for some reason)kind of detract in this particular case though.