Cake Wrecks

Maybe I’m a really sick person but I get a lot of kicks and jollies out of looking at other people’s cake decorating disasters.

I know that this isn’t kind of me, but it’s very true. You see, I submitted myself to a Wilton Cake Decorating Class once and used my (valid) excuse of a sprained wrist to get out of it. Those flower petals were SO beyond me! I was outclassed by everyone else in the class! Therefore, I especially am interested in people’s cake disasters. They make me feel better because I’ve had so many disasters of my own, I guess. I know we’re all trying and we practice, practice, practice to improve, right?! But you can only make so many cakes to practice on before everyone hates you for those extra 10 lbs. they gained while you were practicing. We all have our limits, after all. So I enjoy looking at what others have done. It bolsters my spirits. (On the flip side, when people make fantastic cakes, I’m supremely encouraged to give decorating another go! It’s like forgetting the pain of childbirth and thinking you’d be willing to be pregnant again. I simply forget that I couldn’t make a icing rose and I didn’t want to spend anymore time on it.).

Confessions made, I laughed hysterically (until tears were streaming down my face) over Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong. The messages that people wrote, accidentally and on purpose, on cakes is just too funny. The cake designs some people were after?! AMAZING (and not in a good way)!

If you (or someone you know very well, perhaps?) enjoys parties, cakes, weddings and other special events that involve cakes then this book is awesome. OR if you want to pat yourself on the back, affirming that you’ve avoided a good number of seriously mind blowing mistakes inspite of yourself, then you’ve got to check out this book. From the scariest looking Curious George I’ve ever seen to an amazing wedding cake combination involving dolphins and army men, this book was really funny. The commentary by Jen Yates just adds to the experience. To get an appropriate feel for the type of things you’ll see in this book, I’d encourage you to visit Cake Wrecks.com which is Jen Yates’ official cake wreck website. From there I found this one which has me in stitches, given the love of Thomas which resides in our house (and my complete failure to decorate a decent looking Thomas birthday cake a year or so back!):

Yates’ added the following caption: Poor Thomas. All that pastel and plastic flotsam have turned him into the little engine that could – in a pinch – kill you.

I know it’s partly mean but sometimes the decorator just simply asked for it!

If there is such a thing as cake humor, Cake Wrecks is it for a fun browsing time!

Carrie comes by her book obsession honestly, having descended from a long line of bibliophiles. She blogs about books regularly at Reading to Know and Reading My Library.