The "Rose Bush".
(I'm told there's a cake under there...)
The "Rosy Age".I had to stare at this one for several long seconds before I realized the roses are supposed to spell out the number 20. The cool thing is, though, this cake has a built-in clock: see where the light pink roses meet the darker ones on the 2? That's when the first decorator's shift ended.
(Gotta love that candle placement, too.)
And of course, the "Haven't-Learned-to-Write-with-Icing-Yet".No room for an inscription = no complaints about messy handwriting! Not to mention there's no chance of spelling errors, random quotation marking, or becoming famous on the 'net for all the wrong reasons.
The best part? The people who ordered the first and last cakes didn't even ask for that many roses. So Kim C. & Jill S., thanks for showing us just how specific we need to be when ordering baked goods. Now we know.
(Everybody together now: "And knowing is half the battle!")
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119 comments | Post a Comment
Actually considering my family always fights over the roses those cakes would great for us, even if they are rather tacky.
Wow...
Go Joe! *in response to the last sentence of post*
Actually I like the roses...I think it's really pretty...and perfect for those of us who always fight to get the piece with the icing flower
Holy arbors, Batman! Those are some impressive sets of roses.
And bless you for getting in a GI Joe reference first thing in the morning.
The upside of these cakes: Calling out "I get the rose" won't be an issue! There's enough for everyone!
Is that a "finger" swipe on the first cake?
Okay... I love icing, don't get me wrong. But icing without a cake? Not so much...
And knowing is half the battle!
Thanks, Sgt. Slaughter! LOL If my kids saw a cake with that many roses, they'd pass out from the ecstasy.
LOL! They aren't as God awful as some of the cakes I've seen on here, but I would be in a sugar coma if I tried to eat a piece of that!!!
G.I. Joe!
As a mom of 4 kids that always fight over the roses (leaving me with none... sniff, sniff...) these cakes of floral abundance look like a dream come true!
ajnabi said...
"Thanks, Sgt. Slaughter! LOL If my kids saw a cake with that many roses, they'd pass out from the ecstasy."
Heck, I'd be the one passing out from ecstasy! That would be after I ate all the roses.
Seriously, I do kind of like the first cake...would use different colors tho.
Love this blog!!
That's like my dream cake! After all isn't cake just a frosting delivery system...
I think I'm going into a sugar coma just from looking at these!
the roses are fine and all, but i'm pretty sure my blood sugar levels went up just by looking at all of that frosting (and i like the corner piece of cake, but wow.. that's a lot of... FROSTING).
What's with the really blue roses on the first cake? They aren't natural.
You're right on the second cake, not only did the color change, but so did the style of the rose! And second on the candle placement!
Everything's coming up roses....and roses...and roses.
I'm one of those people who actually do not want a piece with a rose on it...tough luck in this case, huh.
"and knowing is half the battle"...been my motto for a long time!
i think i just went into a sugar coma just from looking at those cakes -er- wrecks
I have to laugh at how many people here are cake-philosophy brethren to my husband. He always wants the piece with the flowers and/or the border (i.e. corners). And his ideal cake has a one to one frosting to cake ratio. He really believes that cake is just a means to get the frosting to your mouth (just like muffins are a butter delivery system).
OMG! I'm drooling here. Those are like my fantasy cakes! Oh the lovely sugary floralness of it all!
As everyone else has said, the people in my family fight over the roses....however that is overdoing it!!!
The 20 cake only used 19 roses...
boy oh boy. Those are dream cakes. The more sugary crisco buttercream the better. yum yum yum. I'd eat that first one in one sitting.
That's why i'm unhealthy you see.
I love the last one! I like the colors and all the frosting!!
Thal
I _totally_ made a cake similar to these back when I was learning roses. (granted, it wasn't for sale...) My office LOVED me when I brought in my practice pieces.
(former Wilton instructor)
Those cakes boggle my mind. I mean, just because one is practicing making roses doesn't mean one has to use all of those damn flowers; just throw it back in the pastry bag. And for the color difference on the "2", the decorator should have done just that and evened out the color a bit. I'm a cook, not a baker, and I can see that. *facepalm*
Been a fan of your blog a while. Thanks for making my day today! :D
Wow, that first one looks sort of like the lamp that the last owners of my house left behind, except all the roses on the lamp were pink.
My husband always calls dibs on the roses, even when it's not his birthday cake, which I think is very rude (is there a protocol for that sort of thing?).
As someone who will stab old ladies and children with my cake fork to make sure I get a piece with a rose, these look fabulous to me!!
i dont feel good. i hate frosting. i cant imagine getting a cake with all that frosting all over it. im sure it would make me sick. YUCK!
Wow! That gives new meaning to "stop and smell the roses" !!!
I have to say the first one is beautiful . .too pretty to eat. I love roses and we too fight over them. Usually we only get cakes with roses for birthdays, so the person with the birthday gets first dubs on the roses, then of course, being mom, I dish up the rest and I always save myself a rose piece.
I may be no botanist, but it seems to me that one bush does not usually produce three different colors of roses...and that's once you get past the concept that there may or may not be a cake underneath all that frosting.
Like you, it took me a little while to figure out that all those roses on the second cake made up the number 20. I think the drastic difference in color may have slowed me down...or perhaps it was just the placement of all the candles into a little ghetto. Not ghetto? Planned Living Community?
Does anyone else see the number 211 written in those roses rather than 20?
I think it's hilarious that there are only 19 roses spelling out the number 20. I mean, if you're going to write a big number with roses, wouldn't it be cool to have the same number of roses? :)
mmmmmm now i know what to ask for on my b-day cake. Lots of roses! and i want them all. Frosting is king. Imagine what color your mouth would be after eating all those roses in the first cake!
Is it just me, or can you see the cake through some of the leaves at the left middle of the first cake? I see golden brown yellow cake through that meeting of leaves...
Does the age cake actually say "Billy" in the lower right corner? Did a BOY get that cake?!?!?!
Lord Help Us....
I think I'm going into a sugar coma...
G.I. Jooooooooe!!!
What is on the second cake in the lower left hand corner? Is it a name?
If only they could have fit one more rose on the "20" cake...!
Am I the only person on earth who actually prefers cake to frosting? All those roses, perfect, dystrophic, garish, or whathaveyou, will all end up in a sad pile at the edge of the plate.
-Nancy
I dont hate the last one.. it kinds makes me think of a funeral you know the casket piece that just covers everything ...the first one i was looking closely at, and you know i dont think they put a layer of icing on the cake before the roses. It looks like naked cake under all those.. now that might have taken some talent (of some sort) to cover the entire cake with minimal empty spots *shudder!
Why, on the first cake, is there no frosting UNDER the roses? Seems a little crazy to put so much time into the roses and not choose to actually frost the thing!
Thanks for the G.I. Joe reference this morning! Your blog always makes my day brighter :-)
oops in my last post about the first one... i meant to add that it looked like they just squirted chocolate icing where the roses met. why else would the icing come up over some of them?
I actually like these, except the two-toned pink 20 cake. But I wouldn't want to eat any of that frosting goodness.
Aww the big 20 just shy of 20 roses :(
Well I've sent you my own "flower wreck" but I don't think my kids would have a problem w/ all of the flowers. As a matter of fact my SG would be in heaven!
The top one is "pretty" but I think as I've gotten older, the sight of so much frosting makes me want to gag.
I just love how the 20 in roses cake only has 19 roses!
These cakes look good to me! Everyone in my family wants the rose pieces. Perfect cake to frosting ratio! Cake is really just for holding up the frosting, isn't it?
My only issue is that the first cake isn't frosted underneath the roses. It's just roses placed directly on top of the cake. At least they know how to make roses, otherwise, it would be worse!
If you're brave enough to enlarge the images by clicking on them, you can see that the brown between the roses on the first cake is definitely frosting. And the second cake (the only true wreck of the bunch, in my opinion, though I can see why you'd shy from the other two) says "Happy Birthday" in the upper left corner, and what looks like "Billie" in the lower right...though it could be "Billy" with an erroneously dotted y.
I think it does say Billie, but that can be a girl's name. My cousin's name is Billie. (girl)
And don't you just love how on the number cake the decorator could only make one size of rose, so when it came time to put the Happy Bday on it she had to make little extra "flaps" that extend out to write on in teeny letters that you can't even read?? BRILLIANT!!
The children at the home of those cake receipients were in heaven! I may be in the minority, but my favorite part of the cake is the residue leftover on the bottom, I would prefer my cake without icing so all those pretty roses would be swished to the side! Hours of wasted effort!
Mmmmm that first cake looks delicious. I honestly don't like cake (to eat, I love looking at cakes) so I always take a slice and just eat the frosting off. That first cake is like my dream dessert. lol (In fact, maybe that swipe off the cake was me and I was in such a daze of excitement I forgot I did that. Sorry guys!)
Eww. I hate icing roses. They mess up the cake to icing which should be like 3:1 not 1:1.
Diabetic coma, anyone?
Hi Jen,
I just love your blog. From the day I found your blog on the Blogs of Note, I have been following it every day. My son was diagnosed with leukemia 3 months ago. So your blog just lighten me up every day. Thanks for sharing all these "wrecks"...haha!
Blessings,
Evelyn
Have to say that these are my ideal cakes! Lots and lots and lots of frosting! :-)
Sometimes when I look at these cakes I get jealous that I can't eat them. Today is one of those days.
"Knowing is half the battle...
...the other half is violence." (I have that on a T-shirt). Violence, caused by a snap in the brain when one is confronted with too many hideously coloured roses, unevenly-coloured and -placed roses, or just too many darned roses, period, on a cake. Teeth hurt! :D
Click to enlarge the first picture. That looks like chocolate frosting under all of those roses!
That first cake resembles a vintage-retro women's bathing cap, visible here:
http://www.amazon.com/VINTAGE-STYLE-COLORFUL-PETALS-BATHING/dp/B000R9QJS6
Wanna wear a cake on your head? Wanna eat a bathing cap?
nom nom nom sugar rush.
The idea of all that icing makes me want to barf, but my son is drooling...
Number three does look like a casket. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
At least these cut down on the battles of "I want the rose!" "No! I want it!" There are enough roses for everyone!
I'm not sure the first and last cakes are wrecks. If you like frosting like my husband and kids, they're perfect! With your 600 submissions, I'm sure you could find something worse than these.
beloved30, I saw 211 instead of 20 as well. Great minds!
Eegads! That first cake is just ghastly!
The second one reminds me of the little tiny pink candleholders my mother used to have - they were little plastic rosettes and the candles fit in the centre of each one.
LOL on the "clock". I was a bit puzzled about that colour-change.
Kat
P.S. Blue roses are just wrong!
Hmmm...
Does anyone else think that the 20 looks like 211? That's what I saw when I first looked at it.
Karen
I think my mom used to have a bathing cap that looked an awful lot like that top cake.
I only count 19 candles on the 20 cake
I think the reason the first and last one were wrecks is because that's not what was ordered.
While they do look nice and I am one of those always wants the corner piece or one with a rose on it, these are making sick to my stomach just looking at all that frosting to eat.
OMG SO PRETTY!!!! <3 ^____^
Finally, a cake that my sister and I can share equally. She likes the frosting globs, I want the cake. Score!
Wow, that is WAY too much crisco & sugar goo. I think I just got a cavity.
Seriously thought that the 2nd cake would have been so much better had they put 20 roses instead of 19. Then they could have put a candle in each one!! K
Hm. Guess I don't consider the first a wreck. I like the way the lovely brown color of the cake peeks through the roses and leaves. 'Course, if it was my cake, it would probably be thrip and aphid infested as my real roses are. *sigh*
sciencegirl: Just leave me your roses gurlfriend! LOL
Mind you that 20 does look like 211. As for the third cake, if they didn't order it I just don't see them getting mad.
Orderer: Those darn bakers look at all this yummy roses on this cake! Now what I am going to do?
Kids at the party: Arrghuhguggle (Sound of kids drooling)
Save me a slice!!!!!
Peace,
Clueuin
Yikes! Look at all that icing...My blood sugar rose just looking at these cakes!!
Sometimes, too much of a good thing is not always good!
Ok, now you just outed your age with the GI Joe quote! ;) I use that line about 5 times a day...so ya know what gen I'm in!
Caryn
www.fuzzynoodlecraft.com
Ugly cake, cute cats. I just went to their site and they have some pretty cakes.
I also spent about an hour surfing your site. Hilarious.....but my boss says I should get back to work....oops didn't realize the lunch hour slipped by so fast!
Aw jeez...these are my dream cakes! I'm an icing nut...sadly, I'd be offered a slice of any of these and still think I was cheated on the flowers. Wreck or not, I'm all about icing. (I swear I have my cholesterol checked regularly!) LOL
Two words here....BLUE ROSES???
That is not natural. As a cake decorator that is a rule for me: NO blue Roses!!!! I will make other blue flowers but never roses.
Okay, these are my dream cakes, because I LOVE icing roses.
i kinda love the first one that's all covered in roses, but it is pretty awful that that's NOT what the client asked for.
the other two.... so bad.
What's REALLY funny abut the "211" is that it would've been much easier to make the "11" look like an "0" if the decorator(s) had spaced it just a little differently and used one more rose, to round out the curves you know, and that would have resulted in...20 roses!
Blue roses, bleah.
Just for clarification:
As eye-sore as those cakes are, my mother ordered similar ones for all of my birthdays growing up. I remember kids crying over 3 roses, and who got one. It was a pretty smart solution to ensure that every kid could get their frosting rose goodness...
At first glance I thought the 20 cake was a cupcake cake with a rose on every cupcake. A closer look disabused that notion.
I rather like the first one.
This might be wrong, but I kinda consider the first and third cakes cute.
Then again, I know #3 is pleasing to me simply because orange is my favourite colour.
I would not want to eat any of these, though.
Anyway, though, I guess I'm like chefann's husband. I'm actually really not big on cake. But I do like chocolate or mocha icing ^_^
People at my job would love these cakes bc they are always fighting over who gets the roses.
"So many roses..." :)
Like alot of other people who posted, I like eating the flowers. Those look yummy, even if they are tacky.
Yum! Everyone I know loves icing roses so that would be a great cake for me. Even better if they used those premade roses that taste like "safety" ice cream cones. I love those! I'd pay extra to have that many on a cake even if it did look wreck-y.
But the roses are always the best part! Doesn't everyone fight for them? So, these cakes solve a lot of problems.
(Actually, I think the first one is kind of beautiful.)
Elizabeth
Does anyone else think these all look suspiciously like funeral wreaths? You can just see them all piled in the back of a hearse!
I thought the 20 looked like 211...
Still seeing a lot of Frosting hare in the comments. Granted there are some SANE posters here that understand cake is only a devise to deliver frosting to ones mouth, but still All you frosting haters, you're on notice! Frosting lovers Unite! Oh and the rose cakes? Love them. They are wrecktacular!
My father was a pastry chef. He made really beautiful roses. They looked like proper roses and not these big gigantic icing ploops.
My mother and I used to go to other bakers, including the ones in the supermarkts, and laugh over the gargantuan cabbages otherwise thought of as roses on these cakes.
People need to learn how to make proper roses! Great call on these cakes!
Chrissy
The top one looks like those old fashioned swim caps with all the flowers!
I really hate a lot of frosting so I would probably gag trying to eat those. That being said, the first one is really pretty to look at :).
These...these are not wrecks. These are glorious and I want one now.
Also I was expecting shapeless "rose" blobs instead of actual icing roses. :(
That birthday cake is so ironic. It has 19 roses! They could't fit a 20th!?
The roses on the third cake make it seem more like a coffin than a cake!
Almost all showy roses are grafted onto rootstock. You could easily graft several different colors onto one rootstock.
Blue roses are a standard of fantasy stories about "True Love" (emphasis deliberate).
If it's good quality icing, yum. Otherwise, too much.
My sister, mother and I always argue over who gets the rose and/or corner piece. (We're frosting fanatics!) So these ROSES cakes would be perfect for us. :-)
When my cousins and I were little, there wold be full on brawls over who got the flowers on the birthday cakes at Nana's house. Flowers = more frosting, of course.
Nana finally got wise and started ordering cakes with extra flowers.
Nana's got nothing on these cakes, though!
As someone who loves cake but hates frosting, these cakes make me cringe.
All icing! No substance! Going for the middle piece won't save me now.
I am also guilty of burying a cake under a mountain of icing.
Cheers
I think the roses looked good on the first cake - not sure about the colour choice, but whatever. The cake as a whole was rather ugly though. And I loved your clock joke on the second cake, LOL!
I wish a guy from my school would give me that cake. Then I'd have a reason to reject him.
I don't get all the frosting whining - the more flowers for the icing nuts, the better. I am someone who prefers the cake to the icing, and just can't eat all that sticky sweetness, but I don't have any guilt about scraping it off. The icing lovers have no such easy solution to a sadly under-iced cake.
Dude, these were probably all made by request. Have you never seen the carnage of a dozen grade-schoolers killing each other over who gets the most frosting? Edge-pieces and rose blooms are in HIGH DEMAND.
if people only knew what bucket buttercream was made of...
william danube
I trained to be a decorator at Dairy Queen, and I actually did have to practice my roses. And practice and practice...but once I'd filled the board and they were critiqued, they'd get scraped off, whipped back up in the mixer (ahhh, Bettercreme) and stuffed back in the piping bag for another go-round.