Not bad, not bad - although my teeth are hurting just looking at that ginormous mound of icing, Kat K. Still, there was skill involved in the execution, and here on Wrecks - as in life - we do our best to focus purely on surface beauty. So, moving on.
Hm, we seem to be veering into "ice cream cone filled with flowers" territory, Jana. Still, not horrendous. Next?
Hey, Jessica H., are we sure this is for Thanksgiving? 'Cuz that looks like a burlap Christmas stocking.
Ack! Shiny poo pile! Keep moving, K.R.! Keep moving!
Ah, this is better. A nice, comfy shag rug. Although, what's that on the side?
Oh heck no, Jill S., they did NOT just ice all over the sides of those paper wrappers, did they? Well, there went the whole "Cupcake-cakes aren't as messy" argument. Plus, with those candy corns and green squigglies and all, it looks like someone upchucked over the edge. Yelch.Of course, you could go to the other extreme:
Jaime L., these cupcakes aren't all iced together into one solid mass, which means two things:1) By my definition, it's not *technically* a cupcake cake - maybe more like a "cupcake mosaic". A really lazy mosaic, sure, but still not as evil as a CCC.
2) By anyone's definition, it's not *technically* decorated. A scattering of plastic flotsam does not a decorated cake make.
And speaking of cupcake cakes: some of you took me to task yesterday for failing to point out the CCCs in the Fall Fumbles line up. And yet, when I DO hold up those wrecktastic creations for the derision they are so rightly due, others of you complain that I'm harping on CCCs too much. It's like my own personal Kobayashi Maru, honestly. Anyway, rest assured, dear readers, that my left eye continues to twitch uncontrollably with every CCC posting whether I point out its inherent structural deformity or not.
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84 comments | Post a Comment
Jen, the only thing I would take you to task for is not celebrating ginormous mounds of icing. That's the only thing positive I can find in some of these wrecks.
word verification: scressep...that's the sound my belly makes after eating a ginormous mound of icing, but so worth it.
I'm impressed that you managed to work in a good Star Trek reference during a discussion of cakes.
I'm not impressed, however, with the cakes.
I couldn't possibly bring myself to eat any of that vomity poo.
That last one looks like a rear view of Carmen Miranda!
Monique D.
It's a good thing you told us these were cornucopias....other than the first one...I never would have guessed.
I have finally cleared up the mystery of where these wrecktastic decorators come from. They are obviously kindergartners re-assigned a new life in the witness protection program. My 5- and 7-year-old daughters clued me in when they looked at the cakes and asked, "What makes that one a wreck? It looks like our art project last week". And now we know where our tax dollars are going...
Baffled Mommy
Thank you for ensuring I will not suffer any weight gain this holiday, since looking at those poor cornucopias drowning in their own icing has rendered me completely nauseated. Excellent examples of wrecks, though.
Wait a minute. Kobyashi Maru? And recently we had both Douglas Adams and Doctor Who references. Jen, are you...a geek? (and I ask that in the most positive way possible)
Mounds of poo galore!
I think they need a whole separate class at Wilton: how NOT to make brown icing look like a pile of poop.
And why on earth would you frost the sides of paper wrappers? I remember when I was a kid I had a few classmates that were so over excited by cupcakes that they'd eat them wrappers and all. Maybe the decorator was just trying to make them more palatable. :-P
ugh! i declare a ban on all cccs.
my first thought on CW2 was "harpsichord."
happy thanksgiving, all!
Hmmm...cornucopias...I like the name, but that's about it. They almost always look cheap with plastic fruits and greenery from whatever craft store the owner bought them at 25 years ago...Since I don't like them in the first place, I can't objectively judge these wrecks...so I've come to the conclusion that these should be rated on how many identifiable edibles are represented. So...here we go...
The first one is nice...I mean red=apple, orange = orange or a very mini pumpkin, the grapes are obvious...but what does the yellow equal? Bananas? Peppers? If this thing is made to scale (rriiight) then those are either the tiniest bananas on the planet or the largest grapes. B+
The second one...not quite as good...Are those flowers or fruits? But I give props for trying to make it look like something other than a blob of icing. So...you get a B-
The third...hmmm...blobs of color does not a fruit make, so I think you're going to have to take a C
The fourth one...oh, dear....what in the world is that yellow circle-like object with the brown stripes supposed to represent? I'm pretty sure I've never seen a fruit or a veggie I'm willing to eat that looks like that...purple grape-eque blobs...and the poo basket....I'm afraid you get a D
Number 5....what in the world were you thinking? candy corn? neither a fruit nor a veggie...blobs of orange and yellow, squiggles of green and purple...AND A CCC...oh dear...D- for you.
The last....You FAIL...simply because plastic, irridescent, shiny fruit is neither edible nor attractive...not to mention the CCC issue....so big fat F for you!
And there you have it ladies and gentlemen...tune in next time for Judge that Cake Wreck!
~Bonnie B~
"A scattering of plastic flotsam" is henceforth how I will describe LA.
Word verification: stomina...one's ability to sustain interest in packing the car for a long Thanksgiving road trip.
Craig,
Ah, Yes.
Can you say "Star Trek Shrine?"
Geek On!
The stocking: sure it's for Thanksgiving. See the leaves?
Angie (from over at www.HalfAssedKitchen.com)
Nice, just want I wanted to look at, Shiny poo as I was eating breakfast! Umm
I second the notion that, besides the first example, I would not have known what these were supposed to be without assistance.
And I have to say it.....a cornucopia CAKE? That old horn of plenty is supposed to be overflowing with fruits and vegetables and grains and other wholesome things. So...let's re-create that with mounds and mounds of frosting, shall we? No dear, I don't need to eat my green beans today. You see, I already had some buttercream-version carrots and peas, so I'm good on that ol' food pyramid.
Let me just do an Accu-Chek here and... Oh dear God! Straight frosting! There's not enough insulin in the world to counteract the first wreck. And yes, I think those are supposed to be bananas. They're quite in season in the middle of FALL dontchaknow.
Glovat: matching your gloves to your cravat.
#2 looks like a coffin with flowers at the top of it..... We come here to morn the death of true cake decorating.
#3 looks like the tornado that took Dorothy and Toto to Oz. You have the Scarecrow at the top left corner and you can almost make out what could be construed as the yellow brick road and flower city.
Just not right.
The worst part of the last Wreck is that the plastic junk SPANS the spaces between the CC. So one would fight over who gets the shiny leaf. Or not.
Again, this proves CCC negate any supposed advantage in "ease of serving."
CCC: they are more than evil; they defy principles of coherent cake theory.
I have way less of a problem with the individually iced, non-CCC, covered in plastic fruit that is the last wreck than those that come before it. I mean, holy wrecky wreckerson! A bunch of brown and a smidgen of color does not a cornucopia make!
I've got to say the first one looks like the tale to Jabba the Hut...or maybe I've just been watching too much Star Wars.
Geez, I kind of wish people would stop buying these, so the bad cake decorators would be fired or go out of business, but then we wouldn't get to see these fabulous pictures!
I know I will be taken to task for saying this but ... I like the last one.
*hides*
#3 and 4 look more like brown tornadoes.
As for trying to figure out which "fruit" and "vegetable" the colorful stuff is supposed to represent...
Bonnie B, great recap!
Kobyashi Maru? Reprogram the computer...or rewrite the rules of the game. If you say CCCs deserve special scorn, make it so.
Happy Thanksgiving. LL&P.
Yech! That top "cake" is just way, way too much icing. Sugar rush deluxe!
~Amy B.
You totally lulled us into a false sense of security by starting with two halfway decent cakes, then Wham! Shiny poo pile.
Also, Star Trek reference FTW!
The last CCC looks like they all shifted to one side in the "box" :) Or the poor little cupcakes were desperately trying to run away from the "decorator" with the plastic thinga-ma-bobs!
The first one makes me think that you could make an interesting and perfectly edible cornucopia dessert by making the horn itself from chocolate meringue.
Or you could just go straight for the tooth decay and sugar overload by using copious amounts of chocolate icing.
You've convinced me--cupcake cakes are evil.
Ahem...as a student of medical terminology
That first Cornucopia, looks like a diverticulated intestine, or the sliced off piece of the brain from someone with alzheimers. Not making fun of those folks or anything, but that is what it looks like to me.
Also it looks like the genitalia of some animal on Fear Factor from a few years ago.
10 points for the Star Trek reference!
Jen,
You have vindicated my existance! :) I'm a geeky grandmom who also likes to bake, pun, and hang out on teh Internets.
Now as for those cakes...that first one made my blood sugar pop just looking at it. The poo cake was just too much.
Word verification: autono ... the sound of terror at having to drive 200 miles on the day before Thanksgiving.
They all look just a little too, um, alimentary for me. Except maybe the top one, which looks more deflated than extcreted. Think I'll pass on dessert and have a second helping of the chipped beef instead...
I have NOTHING to say about the Wreckacopias. There just isn't anything TO say. I did however want to thank you for the extra 20 pounds of cake layer I've put on since discovering your site. See, I have this SLIGHT love affair with Cake. More so the frosting, but they seem to go hand in hand, so I've learned to accept the sponge with the goodness. But I digress. I have a hard time refraining from eating cake when mentioned. SOOO, seeings how I can't seem to go a DAY without checking your sight, I've been FORCED to eat my weight in cake. Thanks Jen. And here I thought you were here for the greater good.
Excuse me while I go in search of the frosting cornucopia.
Oh that crazed cupcake cornucopia at the bottom. I could NOT get a good pic of that before the store people started following me suspiciously.
Kobayashi Maru? I knew there was a reason I liked you. I mean, besides bringing the funny on these unfortunate cakes.
You got me at "burlap Christmas stocking." And all that icing - sugar high anyone?
Word verification: congent - what cakes #2 5 aren't.
This is why you eat pie at Thanksgiving, not cake. Is there such thing as a Pie Wreck? No.
"My own personal Kobayashi Maru"...I love it. And I think by now it should just GO WITHOUT SAYING that if it's a CCC, it's almost automatically a wreck, and the structure isn't worth mentioning, no?
the second one looks a little like a coffin to me.
that last one i saw yesterday at sams club!! i had no idea what it was!! ahh, a horn of plenty... ahhhh...??
When I saw the second cake, my first thought was "funeral flowers." As in, lying on the grave so long the stems had died.
Though I would take a large spoon to the icing mound on the first one and have myself one heck of a sugar rush!
Yechhhhhh!!!!!!!
Those all look like one lactose intolerant nightmare!
I suppose the people who buy these wrecks are just desperate to not show up empty handed?
You know, looking at the last one, I would totally love to see some of the same principles (the spiral icing, the cupcakes, the non-uniform shaping) applied to a reimagining of Van Gogh's "Starry Night." Done by someone who was not mentally deranged, I mean.
What's up with the pigmy bananas on the first cornucopia?
-Dee
I was waiting for you to say cornucupcakia, but you never did. Is that not a good wordplay?
While the first one has a ton of icing indeed, i'm not sure it's really wreck worthy. However, as we work our way down the page... *shudder* You know, I made the mistake of making choclate icing for cupcakes and was told it looked like poo. That was the last time I'll be doing that. I think i'll just turn them black next time.
I can't tell if that first cake has Bananas or Corn... I'm thinking it should be corn...
@Jen: "It's like my own personal Kobayashi Maru, honestly."
I love you, man. :*)
Whatever those purple things are supposed to be in the third picture, they look an awful lot like lilacs to me. Which aren't even an autumn flower. Ugh.
@Cake for Breakfast: Are you by any chance a fan of The Inside? Or is that an old-school Bill Cosby reference?
Whoua ! I'm very impressed by deserts. Expectially cone-shaped.
It give me some idea for my next cooking.
I already love this blog, but the scifi references you toss in make me adore it even more.
sometimes I wonder what happens in some people's brains.
then, I have to clean out my brain because i realized someone thought of those...
I keep seeing the last cornucopia cc everywhere! I couldn't figure out what it was. I thought maybe it was a CC that shifted during transition! Now I get it. Yikes. I'm sad I do.
Um, wow. . .I totally just got back from the store where I SAW boxes and boxes of replicas of that last wreck. I gasped and said to my bf "That's the cupcake creation I saw on cakewrecks this morning!!!" Hehehe!
Word verification: crateran. . .the currant state of our economy according to some politicians.
I think the first one looks like a giant colon. I don't like it.
And by "colon" I mean intestine, not punctuation.
This make me want to run to my grocery store just to see if they have any Wreckocopias on display. Maybe tomorrow. They had those bandaged smiley faces at Halloween, so I bet they have something good this week, too.
Is there an example of brown icing NOT looking like poo anywhere? I kind of imagine not.
"Is there an example of brown icing NOT looking like poo anywhere? I kind of imagine not."
lol-Ok, in my video it started out looking like poo but I think it turned out alright :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaMtpEI2sBo
-SeriousCakes :D
Horn o' Plenties gross me out. These did not help my aversion. ;)
Terrifying!
Thanks for the Trekkie laughs :P
Yo Jen - Geeks rule! And funny geeks rule the geeks. You're bringing the funny, the sci-fi AND the sweet? Your hubby's one lucky humanoid.
:-)
I can NOT believe my OWN husband outed me from the Geek closet here. I was doing that just fine on my own, Sweetie - and hey, no disparaging the Trek Shrine!
;)
I had never heard of cupcake cakes until this blog! My horizons have been broadened. ;)
OMGosh!! I can barely make it through your blog without having to make a potty break! Seriously. Best Idea for a BLOG! Who has not been horrendously murdered by some insane baker telling you that is what you ordered....I just love that you make me laugh and I am now a STALKER of this blog for sure! BRILLIANT!!!!
I recently came in contact with my first CCC. I mean that I was offered a cupcake from as opposed to staring at in disbelief in a bakery somewhere.
The amount of icing slopped between each cupcake was amazing. The final cupcake had so much icing down the sides, the girl taking it took about 5 mintues before she figured out how to pick it up. Eating it...I shoulda had a camera on me.:)
The sad thing is, my parents used to have a shag rug that looked like that...but with a beige stripe in the middle.
I think most of those look more like dirty tornados than cornucopias.
This lot was so funny I nearly snorted hot tea out my nose. That would have been a good story... 'Well, I was looking at these photos of cakes...'
The last one is sort of refreshing after the others, but I never would guess it was a cornucopia if it weren't for the context. I like that it doesn't try to be more than a group of cupcakes.
Boy am I glad I don't live in America - I don't think I could handle these Thanksgiving cakes!
And I do like the Star Trek reference: word verification 'enedshat' ... SHATner perhaps?
Wow! Those are pretty sad ... when did CCC become popular? It's like one day we they were not here and the next day, like some kind of horrible zombie invasion, they were everywhere!
Ok, the ice cream cone with flowers? My four year old just said, "WOW, a TRIANGLE with icing!"
Most of them are just missing Taz!
I could go on and on about how horrible these cakes look, but I figured I'll just tell you about my experience with a CCC. It was about a month ago at a birthday for my twin nieces, and our stepmother bought one of those cakes. She said it was called a "pull cake". There was WAY too much icing and not enough cake. People are getting ripped off big time when they buy these!
I like the first one, as long as I don't have to eat it.
Fug is fug.
The ONLY reason that there are a lot of CCCs on this blog is that CCCs have a FAR higher likelihood of being fugly.
ps
Babe, you are doing great work. This blog is one of the highlights of my day. You're brilliant and wonderful and I'm thankful. :D
Yeah...Well.
I was thinking that one of them (#2 in the "cornucopia" section) looks like something that would be laid out with the, er, deceased.
And just below that one, seemingly, could be a leg 'o lamb cake...or a brown tornado.
Either way.
-sendingtheclowns
Jen, might I just say, how very much I appreciate all the sci-fi references? I was already delighted to see the oh-so-Wrecktastic Daleks and Cassandra from "Doctor Who," but the reference to your "own personal Kobayashi Maru" had me cracking up. Now, work in some "Stargate" references (I wouldn't be surprised if some decorator, somewhere, has tried to make a CCC that looked like the stargate) and I will...well, utterly adore this blog above all else is already being done. I'll think of something.
I have to share... We were showing the turkey wrecks to my mom, and of course she thought they were bad, although some were "cute."
Then we scrolled down to the cornucopias, and she looked at the burlap stocking one and said, "Now THAT one looks like a turkey!"
Alex
AMAZING!!!
I love you for properly referencing Kobayashi Maru.
I saw that last "cornucopia" at my local Sam's Club. I had no clue what it was until my DH told me. Even now, I still struggle to see it as a cornucopia.
I absolutely LOVE!! that I just discovered your website today and already have run across 2 sci-fi references- Star Trek and Star Wars.
You rock =)
If you tell me you can actually BEAT the Kobayashi Maru in bad-ass Kirk style, you will be my new hero. ha!