[patting hair] Ahem.
What Stacey H. wanted:
Nifty modern texture. I like it.What Stacey got:
Erm, I'm pretty sure dragging a fork through crusted-over icing doesn't count as a "technique".Anony Bride wanted a cake with tiers similar to this:
But instead she got tiers like this:
Something about the puffy wobbliness of this cake makes it look like a diaper cake to me - you know, those shower gifts made out of actual diapers? Which probably would have been sturdier, come to think of it: the weight of the wedding topper made this cake start to collapse in on itself.This was Stephanie S.'s inspiration:
Which resulted in...this:
I'm not sure who gets the blame for the ribbon selection, but that neon teal "scroll work" combined with the black icing border is sufficiently Wrecky on its own.
And lastly, Vanessa wanted a single layer version of her wedding cake for her one-year anniversary. Here's her wedding cake:
Oooh, preeeetty.And here's what she got for her anniversary cake:
Oooh, shii...er...NOT pretty.Ah, the mismatched whites, the battle-scarred frosting, the ponderous folds of flabby fondant! Who else is inspired to throw a toga party?
- Related Wreckage: Wedding Wrecks
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200 comments | Post a Comment
These always make me a little sad because you only get one wedding. Birthday cakes are fine because it's not a huge deal, but wedding cake wrecks hurt a little. And now I can't stop chanting "Toga, toga, toga!" in my head. Thanks, Jen.
myolderbrothers.blogspot.com
Sorry brides; but this is what happens when you take a design meant for fondant and try to replicate it in buttercream...
Ahhhh - thanks for stirring the memory pot, Jen....To-ga, To-ga. Cheers to John Belushi.
How much a part of each wreck was caused by the switch to buttercream from the fondant inspiration?
That last one is horrible, just horrible!
When will the wreakreators realize that tiers means *tiers* not tears?
When the person decorating the cakes compares the example and the actual cake side by side, what do you suppose they are thinking? Am I missing something here????
Not that it's NOT a wreck, but what's up with wanting the swathed cake (Vanessa's) in only one layer? Seems to me it was destined to remove the dramatic effect of the draping.
After reading your blog every day for the last few months, I'm amazed that any of these "bakers" expect to be paid for this crap.
Wedding cakes gone wrong are my favorites, because you know people are really counting on those. Wrecks make for a more interesting memory, anyway.
Those first two cakes made me crack up . . . the "What Stacey H wanted" picture looks like new rolls of toilet paper, and the What "Stacey H got" looks like what happens to my toilet paper rolls when the inevitable something springs a leak and they get soggy. Both are just delightful toilet papery wreckiness, even though I know you didn't mean the first to be posted as a wreck. :)
Ah yes, a bargain hunting we will go, a bargain hunting we will go...hi ho the dairy-o, a bargain hunting we will go.
Sorry to keep you on hold, to reach a real cake decorator dial 1, actually, skip that, to reach one that will have no clue what you are talking about, dial 2, to say "what the heck, I have money to flush and need something good to complain about on my wedding day", dial 3. An operator will be with you shortly....
Oh and, Please have your credit card card ready :D
OH
MY
GOD!
Do these brides NOT look at the work the baker has done before?? Who are these people? I cant believe they are actually #1 still living, and #2 still selling cakes!!!
I have to go lie down, this was too much!
Meow!
http://www.kitty-cakes.blogspot.com
It looks like in the first two they ask for a translation from fondant to buttercreme. And while still a wreck, switching over is usually asking for a mistake at your average cakery.
Am I the only one that thinks the first cake, even the non-wrecky one, looks like a stack of toilet paper rolls (descending from house-hold to industrial size)?
I have a feeling "ponderous folds of flabby fondant" is going to haunt me the rest of the day!!!
This makes me oh so happy that my wedding cake actually looked like the picture. These are scary! I will never look at ribbon & frosting the same way again!
These poor brides! I just got married myself and was lucky to get exactly what I gave to the decorator. Even if it did turn out wrecktastic, we probably still would have gobbled it down. Cake = awesome.
So for that first cake, what the person *wanted* was a stack of toilet paper?
I just don't get how they messed up the second one! I have limited decorating experience (basically watching my mom, who took the Wilton classes and did some cakes on the side), but I'm pretty sure *I* could accomplish a better looking cake that more closely resembles the original!
This is why I'm making my own wedding cake.
It looks like the bride and groom toppers are getting ready to jump off the one cake, they hate it so much.
I actually don't mind the last one; it seems to be the "best" out of the bunch. At least you can see that the baker at least TRIED. I think anyway.
The first two . . *shakes head*
I kinda like the topper on cake #3. Too bad the rest of it was a wreck.
OMG! If any one of these cakes showed up at my wedding I would not only demand my money back, but the baker would be wearing it on their way back out to the car.
I feel sorry for the brides
_Max Martin
I love these types of posts, but I have to rant about the last one. For one thing, I can imagine that it would be really difficult to pull off making fondant look like a draped length of fabric. For another, the effect only works if you have multiple tiers like in the sample picture. How the heck are you going to pull off the drapey fabric look on one tier in a way that people will get that it is supposed to be drapey fabric? Am I making any sense here? Boo to the bride for requesting such a thing and boo to the baker who consented to it.
I also had wanted something similar to what Stephanie S. did for my wedding cake - only all in white, and without the ribbon. A friend of the family, who does work as a professional cake decorator, was hired to make it. It was delivered to the reception hall and I didn't see it until we arrived after the wedding. She had decided that my request was too plain and had "jazzed it up" for me. "Jazzing it up" equated to pulling every pick of white flowers out of her drawer of antiques and shoving them into the sides of the tiers. It was horrible. But I wasn't allowed to say anything because she was a friend of the family. I'm wondering if some of the other brides weren't in similar situations.
Okay, I'm curious as to why the first cakes have the same initials on the disc. Are the same people getting married again and decided they liked the first cake but didn't want to pay the same price the second time around?
17 yrs ago, because I was young and stupid and broke, we ordered our wedding cake from an Albertson's bakery. And can I tell you? It turned out exactly like I wanted it, fantastic detail, colors exact, and the taste was superb. And it only cost about a hundred bucks.
Of course, I did have a Precious Moments wedding topper, which that fact alone can make a cake a wreck. (please refer to young, stupid, and broke above.)
my word verification is "winseyed", which is what I think some of these wreckerators had to be to produce that mess...do they not have properly working eyes?
These "what they wanted" posts are my 6 year old son's absolute favorites. I called him over from his video game (yes, he abandoned video games to come see). So sorry to those people that have to experience the wreck to give us a bit of joy!
The third cake is not a wreck. Add two more tiers and put it on a candlelit table photographed at a distance, and you've got the original "inspiration" cake. If the bride was disappointed, she should be kicking herself for asking for a design that should not be used on just one tier.
Well, I don't blame the baker for the last one. She wanted a 1-tier cake for a cake meant to have several tiers. What was it SUPPOSED to look like?
that first one looks suspiciously like it was decorated by the guys who artexed my ceiling...
What's peaking out from under that toga? are those toes? sweet sugar it looks like toes.
Ew! The scrollwork one had the support plates sticking out?!?!?! Don't you know the meaning of professional?
the last one made me say "less is more less is more!" Oh these poor brides! I'm so glad the lady who made my cake said I cannot do fondant, that way I could pick out something non fondant.
I can't help but wonder how much of this might be the bride's fault. Did they request or acknowledge that buttercream frosting was going to be used instead of fondant? Seems like one of those things you make clear right at the start as the contract is being made.
And the last one isn't horrible considering what the bride requested. I don't think there's many ways that could have looked good as a 1-tier cake.
These posts used to make me laugh...until my wedding day when I got wreckage of EPIC proportions.
Sometimes in spite of doing everything right-it still all ends up wrong.
I think that first one was done with dental floss. Which is probably still in the cake somewhere.
Angie (from over at www.HalfAssedKitchen.com)
lol hehe that last one looks like the marshmallow man from ghostbusters!!!!
Wow... Depressing
Raychel - MyCreativeWay.blogspot.com
@Missie, I was not young or stupid and ordered my wedding cake from Publix. It was beautiful and delicious. I have no interest in wasting money on overpriced boutique cakes that taste like cardboard.
It can be a succes if you assure your grocery has a real baker.
Anyhoo, I agree with the others, the last one is a wreck only because the request was stupid and cheap.
That cake won't work in one layer. Bad request, not-bad implementation.
Alex
The biggest problem I see with these is the same problem I had with my cake. The cake I was inspired by was rolled fondant, but I wanted buttercream because it tastes better! Whoops.
Still definitely wrecky!!!
These posts are always my favorites! :) It makes me happy that I chose my wedding cake design from the book of designs provided by the bakery! Maybe not the most original, but at least it was safe!
To be fair, that last one isn't far off. It's not a design that lends itself to a single tier.
As for the rest, let us all remember the Wreckerator's Code: Any Blue Will Do!
Oh man, it's not hard. Go to a bridal show. Or go to a cake tasting event at the bakery. or just freaking GO to the bakery once, ever, before ordering from them.
I don't feel that bad for these people (well I do cause it's their wedding day). But if you want a really pretty fondant-looking cake but want to eat something that tastes good, get one of those fake display cakes that you fake cut and then they take it away and bring everyone pieces of a cut up sheet cake.
Yes, that is a thing that exists.
This what happens when people go to grocery chains for wedding cakes.
As a former production baker/decorator who had pride in his work, I will tell you that many "bakeries" are both understaffed and untrained. Cakes often get about 30 mins or so in total. That is it.
Most work with premade "bettercreme" or "buttrcreme" or some other variant spelling; sometimes it comes in pre-colored... ugh. nasty stuff.
simply put, most of these production bakeries are completely unable to balance the demands vs the limitations.
I personally once refused a wedding cake order from a regular customer - three times. Only to come in one day to find it waiting on the cork board. Mind you we had no tiers, no fondant, etc... and only myself for 7 hours. This plus all the regular work to do = no cake. I hung up my apron not long after.
I see these cakes not so much as wrecks, but proof of a wrecked system.
The ironic thing with AnonyBride's cake is that it would have been a lot easier to, say, MAKE THE CAKE LIKE THE PICTURE than to mix, spread, and pipe all the buttercream. I would rather smooth fondant until the cows came home than try to replicate it with buttercream.
Ohhhh, those poor brides....
I have a question from a non-cake decorator: Why would you switch from fondant to buttercream? What is the advantage? Also: Is fondant really inedible? If so, how are cakes served that are covered in it?
I have seen these comments many times on this blog, and I think I would understand/appreciate this blog all the more if I understood this. (And I can't be the only one wondering.)
Thanks in advance...
I agree with commenter Nick that the first non-wreck cake looks likea stack of toilet paper. I thought the same thing and at first thought it was meant to be the wreck, until I saw the actual wreck that looks like toilet paper after the cat has attacked it.
I can't even imagine what kind of moron looks at their creation, compares it to the photo supplied and stares at it with satisfaction. How embarrasing.
okay, um, i actually don't think CWs 2 & 3 are that bad. lopsided, a little off...but i wouldn't snicker or gasp if i were a wedding guest.
I'm still not sure what the whole problem with getting smooth buttercream is--I had a slightly simplified version of this http://tinyurl.com/kkghfp Martha Stewart cake for my wedding (fewer dots on the sides, no shell piping between layers, and no sugar bubbles), it came out perfectly, and was pretty inexpensive.
Toga,toga, toga!
How sad. How very very sad. Yet totally hilarious.
I'm with everyone else who said that these wrecks were absolutely the brides' fault. These "what they wanted/what they got" posts are usually right on the money. But in this case, I think they mostly got what they wanted -- they just were totally nuts about what they wanted and didn't really think about what it would look like.
Especially that last one. She got exactly what she wanted in one layer. Problem is, one layer of that design looks BAD.
The first one looks pretty much like a non-professionally photographed version of the supposedly "non-wreck" one. I think what she really liked about the toilet paper rolls in the first picture was the way they were LIGHTED.
The ribbons on the scrollwork wreck are ugly, but ribbons on cake are ugly and outdated anyway. Way too busy. Serves her right.
Rather than bringing in professionally photographed magazine photos, brides should pick cakes based on the designer's own book of samples. That way you KNOW what your baker is capable of and what their style is like.
I did that with my wedding cake (I asked for a cake based on some of her more colorful, rather than her "wedding" designs) and it was a real stunner.
@ anonymous: It is the decorators responsibility to know that a design will not work and to tell the brides as such. The decorator is the professional and the customer is coming to them because they are requiring their expertise. It is NEVER the brides fault that they ordered the wrong something that won't work. It is the decorators fault for not advising them correctly as to what will or will not work in the medium chosen. That is what they are paid to do.
To all those complaining that the third is a wreck because of the bride for making it 1 tier, you missed the point.
Even with 1 tier, if the fondant had been folded correctly AND the baker remembered to use the shiny paint/dust used on the first to give it the gleam and highlights that the lighting is showing off well, it would have been great.
The baker didn't, so instead of looking like satin fabric like the original, the cake has a matte finish fondant, that alone is sad sad sad.
ha ha ha...reminds me of my moms third marriage. she asked for a 3 level round with simple flowers in light pastel pink and lavendar- what she got was a 3 level round with massive badly done flowers in hot pink and hot purple with neon green leaves....it was so horrific that she cried...and the bakery gave it to her for free!
While the first two are certainly wreck-tastic, the last one isn't AS bad. I fault the bride for asking for a single layer cake of a tiered swag cake. Sure, it can be done, and done nicely (I have one of mine at home, thank you very much), but it's not easy to do.
also, if those flowers on the cake are gumpaste, they look pretty darn good. Of cousre, they could have just bought them.....
I was also wondering if the brides requested fondant cakes to be replicated with butter cream. Only the best of the best (le creme de le creme) are that good with butter cream (as evidenced by sunday sweets).
If I ever get married, I'll just make sure my cake has a yummy interior and eat around the fondant outside that made it pretty. Canoli filling between the layers anyone?
Hm, a few people are mentioning that it's the bride's fault (and what of the groom in all this, by the way...?) for requesting buttercream instead of fondant. I disagree: it's the decorator's job to tell the couple that they cannot work with buttercream, or that they cannot recreate the requested effect without fondant. Many people honestly don't know the difference between the two, other than one tastes good while the other tastes, well... like fondant.
Don't get me wrong, the last cake is definitely wreck-arific... But I find it odd that someone would want a cake with drapped fondant in a single layer. It is an odd request becuase there is not enough space to really let the design flow. With that being said, it was executed wreck-tastically :-)
You can NEVER make a buttercream cake look like fondant it is not possible. The texture will always be different. I tell my brides now I can absolutely do that cake out of fondant but if you want buttercream you need to find the example in buttercream. I hold the bride partly responsible for the top two cakes both fondant cakes clearly, and a bride demanding buttercream, a baker who needed to sell the cake trying to please bridezilla. The execution of the second buttercream wedding cake was whacked though, must have been a bride trying to save a dime, and paying a friend of the family to do her cake. You will see more of these wrecks as people pay Wilton class graduates who have NEVER put together a 4 tier wedding cake in there lives. They don't know about dowel rods, weight, leveling of icing, using a knife to level the cake, and proper stacking methods. BRIDES PAY A PROFESSIONAL PLEASE not aunt sally!
The bottom cake WHO puts a swag on a one tier. That bride is a nut! The baker should have said NO.
Sorry for the rant. The brides need to pay for a professional! If you want to save some money cut your guest list down, rent a cake, do something different like a dessert bar, but please stay away from non professionals on your wedding day.
Wild Cakes... I took a design meant for fondant and replaced it with buttercream and it looked great... so I think it's more like what happens when a baker says they can do it and really can't :) .. but i do feel bad for brides... and i'm just not sure how people think this is okay?! A bride has paid you money to make a cake for her wedding, and you give her wobbly garbage and a toga cake?! i'd be so busting heads ... after i took a picture, submitted it to cakewrecks and died laughing... then i'd ask for my money back :)
restox: "the bride refused to take the cake because it was slightly leaning, what do i do boss?" "Restox it and sell it to the next poor sucker"
I always wonder when I look at wedding cake wrecks, what kind of cakes did the bakery have on display when the couple went in there? Don't they usually give you a photo album you can look at of cakes they've done? Surely they don't have the wreckage on display. So is it pure laziness on the baker's part or they're showing fake cakes they didn't do themselves in their store and photo albums. I'm so confused.
And people wonder why nice sweet women turn into Bridezillas? lolol...
Um...hey guys?
Who said the bride requested that the cakes be butter cream? I don't remember that.
Sometimes, I feel like the comment section is like the game telephone. One person says one thing as a hypothesis and it becomes fact.
I blame you, Wild Cakes smiling all innocently over there. Shame...;}
john
Yikes. My mom is getting married a week from today and she was NOT happy when she saw this entry--she decided to do individual one-tier cakes for each table instead of one big wedding cake, though. The way I see it, only more opportunity for Wreckage, though!
"toga! toga! toga!"
Mmmm.... SORRY, but both of those first two look like TOILET PAPER!
Only the first one is some nice charmin ultra, and the second one is Member's Mark, or some other cheapo brand!
I'm SOOO glad my mother did a FABULOUS job on my cake!! I hope those brides have a good sense of humor :)
@ blueiguana: The difference between buttercream and fondant is this: Fondant was originally used in places such as south africa and australia because it stands up better in the heat than buttercream. It has only infiltrated North America in the past 20-25 years, making it still somewhat of a novelty to us because of it's smoother than buttercream appearance. Whether it tastes better or not is abit of a cultural thing. North Americans tend to prefer the taste of buttercream to fondant because it's more "fatty"...ummm I mean "palatable" ( Yee-aah, that's what I meant)So to westernize it abit many bakeries use buttercream under the fondant rather than the original and more traditional marzipan and apricot glaze. So to sum up...alot of North American brides want the look of the fondant but the taste of the buttercream....and ...well...you really just can't have both.
BTW to the baker (dohmnaill) that noted to odd spellings of buttercream products that get around actually having butter in them. In Canada the FDA does not require that buttercream has ANY actual butter in it. Not sure what their rules are in the U.S.A.
Rian, Straw, Dawn, etc. I am glad to see that I am not the only one perplexed by that last cake. As I gazed upon the beauty of that last inspiration cake and then read that the bride wanted it in one layer?!?...how could it be anything but a wreck. I think the draping looks nice, but seriously it is not a one cake tier design.
Oh! And my mom was 65 yrs old with Rheumatoid arthritis issues!
that's horrible! i hope they received a refund.
Looks like the brides had fondant dreams but buttercream funds. Or maybe they just don't like the look of Play-Doh on cakes. Regardless, I don't think the cakes look wrecky. The bakers did the best they could. And let's not forget that the inspiration cakes are more than likely from wedding magazines that hire food stylists to make everything look perfect.
The blue ribbon selection was probably the bride's - most bakeries require the bride and groom to supply toppers, ribbons, fresh flowers or whatever they want on top of the cake short of gumpaste flowers and fondant.
What wild cakes said! After 3 weeks of work experience at a local bakery I can totally see how this happened. Well, no 1 looks like it fell over and they tried to recover it, but as for the others, this is a mixture of cheap bride syndrome and bad communication with the consultant at the bakery who probably needs to say 'no' or at least tip the bride off as to what she's going to get for the cheaper price of buttercream....
The last one was almost impossible to copy as just one layer i think.
The toga cake just looks sad.
~Amy B.
Cakes like these make me feel sorry for those poor brides!!!! To have your big day mess up because of, some bakes who can't copy something!
Anyone else see a waterslide in the last cake?
These wedding cakes gone wrong actually make me very sad. I can't imagine how horrible those brides must have felt to be expecting an exquisite cake and got those instead. No do overs, you only have one wedding day, and you have to just go with it.
Shame on the bakers for promising something they couldn't deliver, shame on the bride's for not choosing the right baker. I know that price is always a consideration when choosing your cake and the bakery...but this will ring true....you get what you pay for! No bride should ever expect to take a picture of a $1000 cake to a bakery and say I want this but for $250. ISN'T going to happen!
I like you, John (hubby of Jen) and how you sweep in to bring us all down back to earth. :)
Wedding cake wrecks are always my favorite. It's that same evil being inside me that loves watching "Wipeout" and Japanese game shows.
You are absolutely awesome and I die laughing every day. keep up the outstanding work!!
Eughhh! That first monogrammed cakewreck looks as though it were carved out of vegetable shortening! Disgusting.
Only one thing will distract from these wrecks: an full open bar.
The last cake is not a wreck simply because it is one tier. As proof, click on the "What She Wanted" picture to enlarge it. Then cover the bottom two tiers with your hand or a piece of paper. See? One tier can look good. Maybe not *as* good, but still good.
As another pointed out, there's a technique to make the "fabric" portion look shiny and satin-y, which would differentiate it from the body of the cake. If that had been done, the cake wouldn't look like a Sharpei puppy.
This post makes me very very sad :'( I can't imagine getting one of those wrecks for my wedding.
These aren't quite as horribly bad as I expected. (This site has clearly raised my expectations of horribleness to unsustainable levels). Without knowing the target, most of them wouldn't make me pity the bride, without that basis for comparison.
I can see that they don't match the amazing example cakes, but how rare is the talent that can create such things? Perhaps the bakers didn't realize that the client needed to be told, "this picture is of a $2000 cake made by a top cake artist, with any imperfections in the cake corrected by altering the photograph. For $200 we can make something like this, but it won't be as polished."
Or is it a reasonable expectation that any professional bakery could create such wonders?
blueiguana, buttercream is delicious, and for much of wedding cake history has been the covering of choice. It lends itself to piping all kinds of designs and borders. Fondant is more like a sugar dough that can be rolled out for a smooth texture on the cake. It is not always inedible, but chances are the decorator gets it in bulk, so it probably won't taste as good as homemade.
It's possible that the Bride thought about taste when she brought the picture to the decorator and requested buttercream, but chances are she brought the picture to be exactly duplicated. That means fondant, and many from home decorators have never even used fondant. But they can pipe like crazy.
My recommendation, if you see a picture in a magazine and want it, go to your local high end cake boutique and see if they can do it. Make sure they can work with fondant if that is what you want. If you are on a budget, and you know someone who does cakes, you could do like I did. I told the woman doing my wedding cake that I just wanted the white butter cream icing on my cake and I wasn't picky about how she piped it on. Then my florist put the flowers on top and around the tiers. I knew the woman's skill wouldn't let me down, and I had a beautiful cake.
http://agirlinherkitchen.blogspot.com
The brides asked for tiers, but probably ended up with tears...
Sorry that my first ever comment here had to be an awful pun. :D I do love this blog!
Word verification: sanessly. As in cake wrecks are not created in a sanessly fashion.
Unsightly, but certainly not the WORST inspiration vs reality cakes you have ever shown us. I just hope that the brides read your blog so that they know how badly they COULD have had it.
This is why I'm have s'mores and banana boats at my wedding, instead of wedding cake.
~Faith
it was her fault for only wanting one layer! the last one wouldn't have been to horrible with other layers!
I agree with John (hubby of Jen). Who's to say that these were the results of cheap bridezillas demanding buttercream?
And there is NO excuse for that second one. Egads!
What's terrifying to me is just how simple most of these can be. I'm not saying that I could do it myself (I couldn't...ask me about the year I tried to turn an egg-shaped cake pan into a penguin for my son's birthday), but...I mean, smooth frosting, a bolt of tasteful ribbon, a few lines with dental floss, a squiggle here or there...only the last cake looks "hard" to me, and that's actually the one that disturbs me the least. (Other than being truncated. Comparing the two pics reminds me of the houses I grew up near where people would build the basement first, run out of funds and just put a roof on the thing. It's just so obvious that that wasn't the initial intent.)
now i feel all weird cause in LOVE how fondant tastes. The original w/ apricot. The one with buttercream is an awful combination. I didn't now that was an US thing.
The bakers "tried their hardest"???
Reminds me of the old adage: FAILURE - When your best just isn't good enough.
Seriously? Did you see the clashing ribbons/scrolls on CW 3 and amorphous blobs CW2 tried to pass off as 'tiers?' Fondant or buttercream, there really is no excuse for these wrecks!
WV: Comnoxi - the prescription these brides had to take to calm themselves after seeing their inspirations crushed by the wreckreaters
Every time a botch a cake--and it's usually only going to my family--I read your blog and feel much better. I do feel bad for the brides--Taylor (My Older Brothers) is right--you only get one wedding day. So do your research! Look at the baker's portfolio and call some of their previous customers!
Funny that you should post this today. It's my 10th wedding anniversary. Too bad the day is a bust though, because his boss went on vacation leaving him to have to work the entire day. OH well looking at a few wacky cakes might make me feel a little better about the non romantic, stay home eating tv dinners, and watching a rented movie anniversary. Life is grand! :-)
Why do people take professional cake examples to grocery store bakeries?? Grocery store "bakers" can't hack it! Go to a professional people. It's your wedding day!
Just because one cannot afford to spend alot of money on a cake, does not mean they should have to settle for a cheap looking cake.
When ordering a cake, one expects to get what they ask for. If a decorator says they can do it, they should deliver. If they cannot, then they should admit it and refer the person to someone who can. Which is better: having a reputation for good customer service, or having a reputation for being a bad decorator?
Wedding cakes gone wrong are always bittersweet (get it?!)
I wonder what bakeries these people are going to and if they do any research beforehand.
Judy:
Don't most bakers put buttercream under the fondant to hold the fondant in place? I've been playing with fondant at home lately, and that's how I've been doing that. Then even if you don't like the taste/texture of fondant, you can just eat around it and still get a yummy buttercream iced cake.
your blog makes me laugh until I cry every time I read it... Thanks for a little humor in my life!!
fondant vs buttercream
(to whoever asked why someone would chose to work with buttercream over fondant)
I am an amatuer baker, and I find fondant very difficult to work with; it's hard to use if you are not familiar with it. It wrinkles easily and overlaps. And the first time I used it, it found every dip and bump and imperfection on the cake itself, giving it an uneven, lumpy shape. I know it makes cakes look so much neater and more professional, but it is hard to work with, and a fondant cake can look just as wrecky as a poorly iced buttercream one. Real fondant, which is basically 100% sugar, is also more expensive than buttercream, and some places will use a fake fondant that is pretty gross.
Count me as one of the people saying that none of these cakes actually look that bad. Sure, the electric blue on the third one is gross, but it's the flowers that make it look tacky to me. The second one is the only one that RAELLY misses the mark; the inspiration cake is very modern looking, and the actual cake looks like your standard pretty-princess white wedding cake.
The last cake: they got what they asked for, IMHO....or maybe what they deserved! Without three or four layers, the draping just does not translate well.
Okay, I just can't keep quiet on this one.
1. Who said the brides requested the buttercream? I don't know anything about cakes. If my decorater told me a cake could be done just as well in buttercream, I would totally have believed her.
2. I like to think my own wedding cake is evidence that a decent effect can be made it buttercream. It does not resemble toliet paper in any way! http://tinyurl.com/ms852g
3. It was $300 in 2005. (Which included two sheet cakes and an anniversary cake not pictured. Every layer was a different flavor. No fillings, though.) You don't have to spend a fortune to get a decent cake. And it tasted fabulous. My photographer actually called my baker the very next day to order her anniversary cake.
The last cake: they got what they asked for, IMHO.... Without three or four layers, the draping just does not translate well.
Taylor (My Older Brothers) said These always make me a little sad because you only get one wedding.
Theoretically, but not necessarily. I'm looking forward to my second. I got lucky with the cake (which was ordered sight unseen, on the assurance from my mom that it would be nice) the first time. After seeing how wrong it can go, I don't want to tempt fate the second time. Plain white sheet cake for me!
WV: raver. Well, that would explain who makes all the psychedelic wrecks, but these are a little too understated.
God, for some reason these just make me want to CRY! Those poor brides, all high with anticipation, and they get these wrecks. So sad!! But hilarious too. I'm having a crisis here.
Once there's time for a reaction I wonder what it looks and sounds like. Because it has to be a chemical reaction that one of those brides. I don't know...I'm easy going but I'd rather go fast to find some cupcakes at Albertson's or send someone to Costco.
The first one *would* have made it (maybe almost) if not for its being left out on a table, uncovered, the night before; I remember peeking through the bakery window and seeing a couple of playful mice enjoying a rousing game chase-each-other around the cake. The longer streaks are from the dragging tails, you see. Later, they paused to lick frosting from between their little toes...so precious!
The last, one-tier-wonder thing is a marvel of rakishness! I think I saw that exact design on a hat once, on an elderly woman in the park. She was feeding the pigeons.
Oh I feel especially for the 3rd bride (Vanessa) as the inspiration cake is just about the same one I picked. Luckily, my bakery actually had done the original cake so it was executed flawlessly. I was so excited for that cake...I would have been devastated to get that wreck!!
Ok.. let me ask a stupid question:
Don't brides check out a baker's portfolio before ordering a cake?? C'mon, if a baker comes up with wrecks like these, wouldn't ya think that a good portion of their cakes are wrecky too?
Caveat emptor.
AAAAHHH! *cringe* This brings back awful memories of the lone wedding cake I have ever done. It was a favor for my brother, one of his friends/co-workers was getting married and she wanted me to do it. She liked my work, and I was happy to do it. I mostly did it for the cost of materials (she bought me a new set of pans which I got to keep!)
Thing is the picture she gave me of what she wanted was of a Fondant creation, and she wanted it replicated in buttercream. Probably wouldn't have been so bad...but it was a cascade of grapes and vines...with satin ribbon. I was SO out of my league! I did my best, but everything that could go wrong DID go wrong, and I was nearly in tears by the end of it. :(
She still liked the cake, and she loved how it tasted, so I felt a little better, but I vowed to never again do a wedding cake unless I know for certian I could pull off the design and that it was for someone who would not be so hung up on perfect looks.
...actually, that wedding cake of mine would be a fine canidate for this site. ;_;
Well.... at least they resemble wedding cakes. More so than some previous ones have done.
The first one has issues other than trying to reproduce a fondant design in buttercream. Some spots look like they were trying to use a broom and sweep the frosting. The fondant-free Sunday Sweets features here should be plenty of proof that it's possible to get awesome looking cakes with buttercream, and I see little reason a cake with such a simple texture couldn't have been decently reproduced in a non-fondant medium. Even the little round plaque looks awful, and that wasn't done in fondant on the inspiration.
The rest I thought were buttercream to start with, with the exception of the fondant draping on the last one, though I thought the cakes themselves were still done in buttercream.
Cake #2... Ya know, there's no excuse. The inspiration piece was simple flat frosting (or fondant) with basic ribbon. No frou-frou frilly stuff, no bead work, no shell borders. I find that one to be the wreckiest of the bunch because it's like the wrecker took their idea, thought, "But it's a wedding! It should be frilly!" and proceeded to completely ignore what the couple asked for.
Poor Poor brides.
I wouldn't pay.
I agree with everyone that said those brides should have done a little more research, and demanded to see a portfolio.
http://confessions-of-a-waitress.blogspot.com/
A lot of wreckiness could be avoided if the grocery stores would admit that their minimum wage teenager employee can't put together a $2,000 masterpiece. It's not the teenager's fault they are being asked the impossible.
I have to agree with everyone who says that the last one is not bad. It really was dumb of the bride to try to make that a one layer cake.
I've sort of regretted not having a traditional wedding with a cake and all that (I was married in Vegas)but when I think of all the migraines that I didn't have, I think my decision was the correct one.
When you refer to tiers, perhaps you should replace with tears...these are sad...I only hope they tasted decent.
Judy, thanks for explaining the difference between the fondant and buttercream. I don't get to eat a lot of cake, and I don't think I've ever had fondant.
To the other person who said brides are expected to furnish the cake toppers and ribbon, wouldn't it then be on the part of the baker to at least TRY to match the colors? Is the bride literally walking in after the cake is done with "Here's the ribbon"? If so, the process is all backward.
Honestly, IMO, there is enough blame to go around on all these. Maybe the bride should have insisted on seeing other examples of the baker's work and had realistic expectations (you get what you pay for), but certainly someone at that bakery should have been able to compare picture to product and thought, "Not pretty."
But BOTH parties have to communicate one with the other. The bride can't know the baker's limitations unless she's told, and the baker can't read the bride's mind.
Hm, I don't feel quite so bad about our wedding cake anymore. We wanted an iceberg, somewhat elegant looking, in a sea of blue. We got a non-elegant mountain, with a small lake with cutsie polar bears. I have to see if I have a good picture of it.
We always shake our heads when we read of the maker winning local wedding cake awards. I guess she does better with traditional cakes, although she said she'd do something really cool for us. :( At least it wasn't a tiered cake that ended up looking like an iceberg instead!
I just don't understand how a baker can be this disconnected from reality. If they lack the skills to make a replica, they should say so. If a bride asks to substitute buttercream for a replica of a fondant cake, the baker should say it probably won't work. And the baker should certainly not be so delusional as to believe that something that looks like cr*p and bears little similarity to the photo they have been provided with is going magically look pretty when it arrives at the reception.
A professionally made cake should be attractive in its own right, even if it looks nothing like the original it was meant to replicate. These are wrecks even without the "inspiration" photos for comparison.
what I don't understand (and maybe someone else has already pointed this out...I didn't read all the comments yet) is that these designs all looked relatively simple. The one cake was simple tiers with ribbons on it! How do you mess that up?!?!?!?
of course I'm remembering back to my own wedding cake and realized that while it came out pretty enough that at the reception we just cut it up and didn't think anything of it, seeing the pictures...that wasn't what their display cake looked like at all!!! They did good piping work on the display, not so much on my cake.
I think these are tough to look at because I can imagine my wife if she had seen one of these on our wedding day. It makes me shudder.
myolderbrothers.blogspot.com
wv: dedwan - The way a dyslexic hick spells how he pronounces "nodded".
The first ones look like toilet paper rolls anyway! And reading through the comments I realize I am not alone. :)
WV: aisses. I don't even have to define that one in relationship to the wrecks posted here! Good job bakers! ;)
to be fair on the last one... how was that cake supposed to look with only one tier? where was the flappy fold supposed to start from?
I'm sorry but I think the last one got what she asked for. It is the essense of the cake - she's the one that asked for the single layer. I just think you can't get the elegance, fit into 1 layer.
And yeah - people- don't ask for a fondant look to a buttercream cake.
If the divorce rate isn't enough to deter you from getting married, these cakes sure should!
Ditto what Wild Cakes said, and I only eat cakes, and know nothing about making or decorating them. If you've ever seen an episode of Bridezilla, you know sometimes it's the bride's insistence that causes these train wrecks.
I bet that those are from the "hobbyist" baker that cut the bride a "deal" for a cheap wedding cake. I've seen the wedding cake professional "wrecks" on her and they are still technically elegant and correct...just ugly.
I love these! The whole "This is what we want... guess we're not getting it."
Oh, and I tagged you, if you're so inclined!
datingdreamer.blogspot.com
Oh, that third cake is so freakin' ugly I would have thrown it at the baker. Just bad. Very bad.
Is that last one even big enough to be a wedding cake? It looks like it only serves 4 poeple!?!
If you're getting married - Please, Please investigate the work of your bakery before you order. If they only work in buttercream you only have yourself to blame when you order fondant and it ends up looking like flabdant. Wild Cakes and others are spot on.
OH good lord. That's terrifying. I would sue.
I hope all these girls got refunds. I mean, sure, it makes for a funny story (after the blood stops boiling), but no laugh is worth a crappy $500 cake.
I think that last one kinda looks like it has on a slide! Too bad they didn't have some cute slidin' bride and groom toppers...
I can personally vouch for the scrollwork cake, as I was a bridesmaid in the wedding. The cake came from a reputable bakery in this area and the bride went to a tasting and was shown examples of work. The cake did taste wonderful; but I still felt pretty bad because the cake was not at all what she was expecting or what the baker said they could do.
I just have a question for everyone who is blaming the brides: Pretend you know nothing about cake decorating and fondant vs. buttercream. Now pretend you found a cake that you love, but it's a fondant and you want buttercream. How is it your fault if the cake turns out as a wreck? Shouldn't the decorator have told you it wouldn't work right? How are you, a complete dummy when it comes to cake decorating, supposed to know it won't work out right?
As for wreck #3, again I wonder how the bride is supposed to know that the design won't work on a one tier cake and how she manages to be the one blamed because the decorator should have known better and told her but didn't.
I know nothing about cake decorating. Absolutely nothing. If I had been ANY of those bride's, I would have expected the decorator to be professional and know their limits and tell me "Yeah, buttercream doesn't ever turn out as smooth as the fondant, here's what I suggest doing instead....." or "Yes, that's a beautiful 3-tier design, but I'm afraid that won't look right on a cake with only one layer."
So HOW can the bride be blamed in any of these situations, when it's more than likely the bride has no idea about cake decorating other than what she thinks looks pretty and what doesn't?
Oops, make that cake #4, not #3.
These are exactly why I picked my wedding cake out of the album of pictures of cakes that my chosen bakery had already done before... Those poor couples. I hope they didn't have to pay for the cakes, or at least got a huge discount. B
I think the last one is well done. The only problem is that it needs more tiers. The bride requested a single layer, and that's what she got. The drapery effect is then lost.
Her fault.
oh, it's posts like these that make me soo happy our wedding cake turned out like we asked (thank god we went simple and with an awesome baker). i just wish i could say the same for my hair and the minister lol
Geez. I was pissed that I didn't get the cake flavors I asked for on my wedding day, but at least it looked okay on the outside. Maybe this is a good idea for your next blog post...cakewrecks where the flavor of the cake was messed up. lol!
Yeah, probably not.
Ok first to those that are bashing grocery store bakeries, not ALL grocery store bakeries suck. One person on here either lives in FL,GA or AL b/c they got their wedding cake from Publix. I live in FL and dude let me tell you, they have the most rockin cakes ever. Even their basic cakes are to die for. If I don't make our cakes then that is the ONLY place I will buy a cake from for a birthday.
Also has anyone stopped to think that the majority of those "professional" bakers got started in their own homes? Has anyone stopped to think that there are tons of women/men who do cakes out of their homes and cheaper and don't have their cakes turn out like that. So come on, don't tell a bride to go pay gobs of money to a professional b/c we have all seen on here many times that even professionals screw things up too, so a professional is not the only choice. This IMHO is all on the baker, like others have said, they know their limits, they know what they can do and even if a bride did all her homework and whatnot and saw millions of cakes that looked awesome or saw an album of their cakes, their only seeing the best b/c who's going to put their mediocre cakes or their horrible cakes out there for all to see or in an album? Oh yeah I can see it now, go to ABC Bakery, look through the album they have perfect cakes for a bunch of money, soso cakes for a little less and then you have the discount cakes that look like crap.Sorry NO bakery does that. So a bride goes in, expecting that they'll get what they are asking for b/c hey that's what the BAKER told them they would get and when they don't, sorry it's not their fault, it's ALL on the BAKER.
So really I think it's crappy to say it's the brides fault and crappy to put down at home bakers and crappy to put down grocery store bakeries b/c you know what, they're not all the same. Sheesh when did it become b/c this one thing happened its all like that become a rule of thumb? Seriously people get your heads out of the sand and think just b/c someone had a bad experience with someone/some place doesn't mean every place in the world is like that and every person is like that.
Oh and if you want to see some of the cakes that Publix does you should check it out on their website. Oh and they actually do go to classes/school to do what they do, they are not allowed to ice a cake until they have taken such classes and decorate a cake yeah if you do that and you haven't taken a class you can get fired. I use to work at one of the stores and knew the head baker (who's name happened to be Russell Stover lol) and knew the cake decorators. So don't clump everyone into one thing or assume that it's all HS kids (which they aren't even allowed to work in the bakery there).
Wild Cakes - EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So I've read through a few of these comments, and on the large part, I agree. I'm a professional baker too, and all too often brides come in with a picture then start modifying it. Say, "I like this, but I want buttercream. And I don't like the flowers, can you change those? And this one is light blue, but I want it more of a "Tiffany" blue. Can you make the tiers square instead of round? And I want three tiers only, but my wedding is for 350 people." So what started out as a simple, clean, delicate cake is now a massive blue square honker and looks nothing like the original cake. And then they complain.
I've also seen people on here saying that "Professional bakers should know their limits and not make false promises"... not all bakers take their own orders- often, an event planner or whoever is lucky enough to have answered the phone is the one that takes the order, and has no clue what their baker can do. (At least this has been my experience in a couple of places, especially when I was just starting out.) And then what? You just don't show up with a cake? No, you do the best you can and hope that it's enough. I hate to say it, but that's how people learn and get better.
I'm not defending these bakers, but I do have sympathy for them. Some of the wrecks on here are truly pitiful but for these, I know that the picture doesn't tell the whole story.
Yeah - i've gotta give some grace on the last one. That design just really wasn't meant for a single layer.
Shouldn't the bakeries have examples of what kind of work they do? Because if you have to show them a picture then that tells me that the bakery doesn't do that type of cake so you're really risking whether or not they can get it right.
Question from an uninformed observer: does anyone actually use fondant for real wedding cakes? Isn't it pretty tasteless?
i love how the bride and groom on stephanie's cake are perched on the edge, pushed off by the amount of plastic flowers lol
Boo to the toilet paper cake(s)! The inspiration one's almost as wrecky as what the bride got, I think. But boy, oh boy, royal blue ribbon and teal scrollwork - now THERE'S a wreck!!
Megan
www.adventuresofacarnivore.com
WV: suffer. How appropriate!!
Sorry John... I calls 'em as I sees 'em. LOL
You are correct that we made an assumption that THESE brides requested buttercream (even more Wrecky if they didn't!) but I wasn't trying to blame the brides so much as offer a Public Service Announcement: "THIS is what happens when..."
FWIW... buttercream cakes can be done beautifully; I have seen many jaw-dropping designs rendered in buttercream. It's simply a fact that many designs do not translate well from one medium to the other.
It's not the kind of work *I* do, so I rarely offer it, and when I do, it is the same price as fondant cakes (trust me; the extra $$ in the cuss jar when I work with buttercream makes up for the cost of the fondant! LOL)
I agree that the bakers (if they had any say at all) should have told the brides that it would not be the same in buttercream, and that there is also some onus on the brides to do their homework. Unfortunately, some decorators include magazine photos and photos from other web sites in their portfolio so it can be difficult.
And one last topic before I close this book... there are MANY different brands of fondant out there. Some taste like a science experiment gone badly wrong; some do not! There are pleasant tasting (albeit very sweet) fondants out there; and most North American decorators do indeed provide a layer of buttercream under the fondant so your guests can simply peel off the fondant if they don't care for it...
[off my soapbox now...:-) ]
Aghhhhh! I love these the best! Seeing these 'supposed to be/reality' cakes made me choose a very simple wedding cake (it was still gorgeous!)!
It looks like one of those pug dogs with too much skin. I bet the bride was in tears.
Thanks for the entertainment during a boring layover at DFW!
On the 6th pic, the toppers look like they want to kill themselves...
This is my favorite section on the blog :)
Why are people so hung up on that last cake? It looks terrible, one tier or not. The swag is not a swag, it's a random blob of fondant. Someone already pointed out that if you cover the bottom tiers on the inspiration cake, the top single tier looks nice. The "fabric" is draped beautifully. The actually cake looks like someone tossed a blanket over it.
Granted, asking for a single tier takes away from the intended look (continuing drapes), but if it had been executed to actually look like the top tier on the inspiration, it'd be fine.
~JR~
WV: whity. Not going there!!
But seriously... do these brides not look at samples beforehand? Are they ordering their wedding cakes at WalMart? This does not happen solely because of the bakery.
This is what happens when you're too picky during the planning stages! LOL! I basically took the cake the caterer included, they asked what I wanted, I said, um, strawberries in it and this on top (had/have a Cinderella topper) and otherwise - make it white and enough to feed the guests I have.
Guess what? It was beautiful. Simple, pretty - white - standing straight up - and definitely NOT a cause for tears.
I know people want their "style" in each part of the wedding - but I'll take taste over glam any day. And trust me, the guests don't care that much about the looks. I worked in weddings a LOT.
AHH - and I will say this - my cousin had a CHEESECAKE wedding cake for her wedding - because she wanted the look of fondant on top - but for it to taste fabulous. So they peeled the fondant off as they cut that sucker. OMG - cheesecake is sooooo yummy...LOL!
I think Food Network Challenges are warping people's sense of a ice, simple, elegant, but affordable cake, ya know? Not every girl lives in a town with someone who can create fabulous - but everyone, I will guarantee, has somewhere they can get very nice, and very NOT wrecked. LOL!
Personally I think fondant tastes freaking AWFUL. Like play-do made with sugar. My wedding cake was buttercream and it looked lovely and tasted delicious.
When my best friend got married at Disneyworld, their cake was covered in fondant, and looked fantastic. But when they serve the cakes, Disney takes them in the back, pulls off the fondant and puts on some extra buttercream on them. That way they look fancy as hell and still taste good, but I'm not sure how many other wedding venues would do something like that.
While I grant you those cakes are ... less than lovely, I have to say that at least part of the blame lies with the person who ordered it. You take a fabulous EXPENSIVE designer cake as inspiration and you expect to get something similarly stylish but are not willing to pay some expensive cake designer to make it - I mean WTF? Cheap price = cheap cake.
My sister's wedding cake was dropped and put back together with extra icing and didn't look as bad as #2 or #4.
And Missie, she had a Precious Moments caketopper too.
Honestly, my jaw was dropped with incredulity from the first picture on. At the last one, a very loud (and I swear, NOT mean-spirited) laugh erupted. Great post.
Alright I hate that last 'good' cake (tiers with that white sheet draping down it) - I don't even like the inspiration. Considering that she wanted one layer of it, I think she got the best she could hope for.
The others are just hilarious, and kind of sad, because you can tell the bakers weren't ENTIRELY on drugs since the cakes vaguely resemble what was ordered, sort of.
I think making that draping cake one tiered doomed it from the beginning, but that attempt at matching whites and the rough icing work on the cake part (for lack of a better word) just added insult to injury.
"Sorry for the rant. The brides need to pay for a professional! If you want to save some money cut your guest list down, rent a cake, do something different like a dessert bar, but please stay away from non professionals on your wedding day."
I answer your rant and raise you a b*tch.
Am planning our wedding now (hooray!). I'm making my own cake because honestly I don't want some pretty 'shell' of a cake that doesn't even taste as good as the cakes I bake. I've eaten a lot of wedding cake, trust me, wedding cake may look great...if a little too foofy for my style, but my cakes are delicious and wedding cakes are not.
Do you really think that we, or any reasonable couple, are going to cut their guest list so as to accommodate a very expensive heap of refined sugar? That's insane. "Sorry, Cousin Roland, I know we grew up swimming in the lake together but if I invite you and your 4 kids, I can't have my frosted castle on my wedding day." Get real.
And this is after cutting all the people I don't really want but feel I 'have' to invite.
Plus, we're lucky. We have a bit of our own money (not a lot mind you) and some parental help. A lot of couples don't have that, and their only option for any wedding cake is to ask Aunt Sally.
Which, by the way, I'd rather have a meaningful but wrecky Aunt Sally cake than a beautiful, tasteless one by some guy I don't know.
So, heh. Rant all you want but some of us have different priorities, and those priorities are spending our wedding day with guests we love, rather than a big spun-sugar fantasy.
And I say this as a cake lover!
(Fortunately my cake won't count for Cake Wrecks submission even if I screw up - I'm not a professional).
Sincerely,
Bridezilla
(Rawr)
When I saw the first cake Stacey wanted (the one with the modern twist) I thought that was the wreck!!! It reminded me of toilet rolls with an initial!!! (Sorry but it did!)
I was one of this particular Vanessa's bridesmaids. The original cake was not only gorgeous, but delicious.
The one tier anniversary cake... looks like a soggy tube sock. :(
<3
Shawn
I live 3 blocks from Vanille (the model cake #3) and they are true artists. They import flour from France and get around export restrictions just to make the perfect croissant. And the cakes are an art form (their mini cakes at $7 for a 3-inch cake are expensive but amazing). They have awards up the wazoo.
So I wonder whose fault it is then that Random Cake Shoppe couldn't match them. The cake shop for not admitting they aren't award-winning experts or the buyer for assuming all pastry shops have the same level of skill?
When your local wedding band can't do a perfect rendition of James Brown doing "I Feel Good" are they surprised? Or do they know there's only one James Brown and understand it's great they could have their own little imitation?
Also, I gotta defend Vanessa's cake (the third one) as some people saying she "deserved" to get the freakish wreck. The first cake (what she wanted) was from her wedding. She didn't save the cake top because she didn't want to freeze the damn thing and eat old cake a year later. So she ordered from a local baker a single layer of HER SAME CAKE. So yeah, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that she's entitled to that again, it can be done. We ate it, it was delicious. (Especially the red velvet layer!)
The single layer was for their first anniversary, and... yeah. So she did NOT get exactly what she wanted.
I find this posting extremely offensive on several levels. Because wedding cakes are only for heterosexual couples. And therefore fail to represent either gay people or single people. Or single gay people. Only smug marrieds.
They're also a Christian tradition and therefore exclusionist towards those of other religions. They also originated in Yarrup and, y'know, other countries' traditions are, like.... scary.
They're also racist as they're covered in WHITE icing. And we all know that white represents purity. And its the opposite of black.
They also contain sugar. Which was produced by slaves. Black slaves.
I'm extremely offended on so many levels.
My six year old son looked at the first cake (the example cake, no less), grinned, and said "toilet paper cake!"
Ironically, Amazing Wedding Cakes on We is going over how to make a buttercream cake look like fondant right now. (Hint: Not piping the edges is considered so obvious that it need not be mentioned.)
Now that we know that the last cake was ordered from the same baker as the original picture, I think we can safely consider it a wreck. That baker was absolutely capable of better work, but didn't put the time and effort into the smaller, less expensive project. That's understandable, but still too bad.
p.s. Jen, do you really review every single comment? That's a lot of work - I tip my hat to you!
I think they are all awful, especially the one with all the fake flowers and junk on it...as another reader said the bride and groom look like they are about to jump off the cake any minute.
AND John is right, there is total truth to his "Telephone Theory" for sure !
I've seen some "wrecks" in my time, but that last one "draped cake" made me ROTFL! I laughed so hard, the tears rolled down my face!
"Draped Tolit Paper" indeed! This one was a "two-fold tragedy" (pun intended), both the Bride and the Decorator were at fault. The Bride most likely wanted "a cheap cake" (requesting a single tier for a small gathering or smaller budget) assuming-rightly so-that more tiers cost more money. The Bride (and/or the obvious amateur Decorator) may not have known that particular "effect" could only be achieved with fondant. Neither may have known anything about fondant, as is likely the case with the majority of Americans. A professional would know. And to those who believe that fondant is "not as tasty" as "buttercream", this does not have to be the case if made properly. However, it "tastes different" than buttercream and can be said to be an "acquired taste". The fondant 99% of bakeries use today (including professional/high-end)is bought in bulk and is the powdered variety (mix with water for instant fondant)or pre-manufactured. I have worked in Supermarket bakeries and the "bettercreme" is actually Vegetable shortening with lots of sugar and preservatives. Great for churning out hundreds of "staple" cakes per week! Working with fondant is another "animal" altogether and should be saved for professionals.
As to showing pictures of cakes in magazines, many don't know the "tricks of the food photographer's trade", many items that look stunning in a photo are actualy not made of cake or icing! The original was probably made by a very skilled artisan, but the cake you see in the photo is often made of a stryofoam base(dummy), with White (or colored) Glue or modeling paste/clay (similar to Polymer Clay) for icing, strings, lacework, and other decoration. The reason is these types of cakes can't "hold up" under the hot lights of a professional photo shoot. Real decorations (especially the more delicate ones or in chocolate) will melt and slide off, the cake will droop, all sorts of things happen in "food photography".
The Bride most likely wanted "a cheap cake" (requesting a single tier for a small gathering or smaller budget) assuming-rightly so-that more tiers cost more money. The Bride (and/or the obvious amateur Decorator) may not have known that particular "effect" could only be achieved with fondant.
Um. What? It's already been stated that the bride that ordered the single tier draped cake ordered it for her anniversary rather than saving and freezing the original top layer from her wedding cake.
And unless I'm mistaken, the photo clearly shows that it IS fondant.
Doesn't anyone read the comments before posting??
~JR~
Hello everyone! I'm the proud owner of the final cake! I'm Vanessa.
I just wanted to set the record straight. The first photo, the "inspiration" photo, was my actual cake at my reception. That is a photo my photographer, Justin Marantz took. The cake was created by Masterpieces in Wheeling, WV.
The second photo is the reproduction that I had made for our first anniversary when we moved to South Carolina. The bakery was highly recommended and I had even viewed pictures of similar cakes they had made in the past. They assured me it was not a challenge to replicate the top half of my cake.
I must laugh though at the suggestion that the problem with my wrecked cake was that it was only one tier. If you look at the "inspiration" shot, the draping effect does NOT go from one layer to another, it's completely contained within each layer.
Had I commissioned bakery #2 to make the cake in 3 tiers, it would have just been 3 times as bad!!!
Anyway, my husband and I got a good laugh out of the reproduction, and I can now warn my new friends to avoid unnamed bakery #2.
I'm another person who knows Vanessa...and another person who has had a cake made by the same bakery.
If anyone wants a good laugh, you'll be happy to know that the bakery she bought it from has the reputation of being one of the top bakeries in our area. However, their problem is that they won't tell people no. They take on more than they can handle sometimes and you end up with results like this.
I'm so amazed that you ordered a new cake for your anniversary. LOL! I'm so lazy....hehehe....don't blame ya for not wanting to eat the frozen layer (ours made me toss my lunch, but then - I was preggers, lol!). But then - doesn't a whole new cake defeat the purpose of the tradition? Kudos for trying to do it - blegh on that bakery for screwing it up! :D
(BTW - people's "take" on the backstory isn't meant as an insult, people - we don't HAVE the whole story so uh - we have to guess...)
To those that say avoid family members or friends for wedding cakes: Not all cakes done by non-professionals are wrecks.
When my mother remarried, she had her new SIL do the cake, and while it was a simple traditional tiered cake with buttercream frosting and piped blue flowers, it looked good and tasted even better.
There will always be brides who will think big and not realize all bakers can't replicate what they see in magazines and TV shows done by high-paid experts, but you shouldn't solely lay the blame on the ladies. The modern culture of American weddings these days has a lot to do with it.
Now, what's the take away? That you can't get an expensive looking cake from a cheap ass bakery that doesn't have a history of doing expensive looking cakes.
The last picture looked like a toilet paper roll
Exit, I doubt you'll return to a blog post that offended you, but I found your comment unjustified towards this site. Perhaps where you live only straight people get married, but where I live gay and straight people are all entitled to marry. While the cakes in this particular post are all primarily white, you can easily find mostly black and other colour wedding cakes on Cake Wrecks. And wherever you live, people young and old, gay and straight, black and white, and of every religion are invited to weddings where they see and eat cake. I mean it's cake. Yummy!
Society may offend you, but this blog is a poor target for your anger, and Jen is definitely an equal-opportunity cake mocker. If someone sent her a photo of a terrible cake commemorating an African-American Buddhist gay wedding, you can bet she would mock it with equal glee.
What I find sad about these piccys is that the cakes are obviously set up for the wedding day, - the posh cake knife, the matching petals ...
... the crap cake!?!
Thank goodness these brides have a sense of humour!
Aviatrix - I think Exit was being sarcastic, since the Christmas in July post was ALL about the offended people....LOL!
these are so sad...however, i guess that's just what happens when you dont want to pay a little more money for a good bakery.
hahaha. a great blog you have here. never knew the situation was *that* bad in the glorious field of cake making :D
Wow. Some of you are sort of being jerks and assuming things, aren't you?
I know one of these brides, and she went to a well known and supposedly reputable bakery and showed them the picture of what she wanted. They simply said they could do that absolutely, no problem. She did not request they switch to buttercream. They showed up with crap.
Cannon Beach Bakery- in Cannon Beach Oregon was responsible for one of these cakewrecks. STAY AWAY FROM THEM!!!
....I actually like the Toga cake.
I'm looking at that second one and wondering where the hell the baker got the idea to put shell borders on it... the original design has NO borders at all and the wreck looks like it was copied from a 1950 edition of a Wilton wedding cakes album!
OMG, OMG that all i can think right now.
I have a feeling that some of these bakers maybe do decent work but have trouble replicating intricate detail or techniques they've never done? Maybe that's generous. But when I chose my baker (she was just starting out and pretty cheap) I noticed that she was definitely better at some techniques - the cakes in her portfolio that looked the worst were ones that had clearly been replicated from other, more expensive cakes. She was good at fake flowers and other fondant stuff, and not as good at hand-drawn stuff, it appeared. I chose an exact cake from her portfolio that looked beautiful, because I knew she could do it. It looked awesome, tasted great, and made it into a bridal magazine with some of our other photos! And it was less than $300! (I love Publix as much as the next girl, but it was my WEDDING CAKE. Come on).
I have to laugh when I see these ribbon cakes, and the bakers that use real ribbon instead of trying to mess with fondant... It's a sure sign of an amateur baker. I catered a wedding once where the baker used PINS to hold the ribbon in place! Fortunately we were there to remove them, as the guests had already consumed several gallons of rum punch!
OH goodness, this just made my day so much better. Ha!
Some of those cakes would have worked better if the actual cake part were made of fruitcake.
It is a British tradition that the top layer of the cake be kept for use as the christening cake of the first child.
With the help of annual doses of brandy and whiskey, added when I was making my Christmas fruitcakes, my daughter's christening cake was luscious.
She arrived eleven years after our wedding.
Didn't hurt the cake at all.
Draped satin sweatsock?
Or Barbie-sized waterslide?
Melted marshallow?