Jen Yates has a roundup of cake wrecks celebrating the Super Bowl. Can you decipher the message on these cupcakes?

HINT: It’s starts with the word “gone.”

Both teams are represented equally in the collection at Cake Wrecks. Link

Imagine receiving a cake in your honor that’s shaped like a foot! Cake Wrecks found five of them. One is for a podiatrist, one is a groom’s cake, and the others? Who knows! The cake shown here may be a commemoration of some sort of injury, but at least it doesn’t have a fungus or a toe-tag! Link

Jen Yates, of the blog Cake Wrecks, published the book Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong in 2009. The response was so great, she and her husband John went to work on a new book. That book, Wreck the Halls is available now. In it, you’ll find hundred of holiday cakes, 232 pages of them, that are doubly sweet: you get to laugh at them, and someone got to eat them. Here’s a sampling for you.

The book begins with just a couple of Halloween cakes, and quickly moves on to Thanksgiving. There’s an entire section of turkey cakes, both the feathered kind and the cooked kind, all looking like something besides turkeys. And some are mashed up with other Thanksgiving traditions.

But I was particularly drawn to this cornucopia.

Maybe because it reminded me of this guy:

In the midst of all this bounty, someone had to ruin the mood. In a high-calorie manner.

The largest number of Cake Wrecks are about Christmas, but there are plenty of other holidays represented, like Super Bowel Sunday.

Better watch what snacks you serve for the Super Bowel. You may have to Go Go Go!

And there’s Hanukah, although this baker wasn’t sure whether to use the nine lights of Hanukah or the seven candles of the non-Hanukah menorah, so he/she compromised and used eight. Then forgot how long a word “Hanukah” is. The book also features a lots of Hanukah cakes with the symbolic five-pointed stars.

Some non-holiday occasions are included, such as this festive going-away party cake.

And this science-fiction themed birthday cake. This is an example of a baker “making do,” although the recipient may have called it “making doo-doo.” Speaking of that, have you ever noticed how cakes that are supposed to have turkeys or reindeer as decorations made of icing tend to end up looking like poo? I didn’t realize that, until so many of them were collected together in the book Wreck the Halls.

Even if there weren’t winter holidays, we would celebrate snowfall. Just be sure to follow the advice of the sage Frank Zappa, and don’t you eat that yellow snow!

But of course, the real fun comes when a baker tries to make a cake look like Santa Claus. It may end up looking more like a Halloween zombie.

Or the ghost of Christmas …something.

I believe this one is supposed to be the Grinch from the Dr. Seuss story.

What is this? I don’t know!

These are just a very few samples from the huge collection of cake in the book Wreck the Halls: Cake Wrecks Gets “Festive”. Oh, there’s lots more. I had no idea there were that many ways to misspell “holidays,” much less “Christmas,” and even “merry.” Wreck the Halls is available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble,  and at a book store near you.

When we were very young, we learned how to place things in order: first second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. Some of us went on to decorate cakes that wished children a Happy Birthday with their age specified as an ordinal number. But occasionally, the numeric abbreviation for an ordinal gets messed up. Cake Wrecks has eight, count ‘em, eight cakes with the ordinals 1th, 2th, and 3th. Link

During graduation season, we see and hear the word “congratulations” a lot. There are also a lot of cakes made for graduation parties -but there are also a lot of cake decorators who cannot spell the word. Some shorten it to “congrats” and STILL misspell it! Cake Wrecks has a glorious roundup of recent congratulation cakes you are sure to get a kick out of. Link

Yes, it’s customary to celebrate happy occasions with cake, but if you think about it, you need cake much more during the bad times. So forget greeting cards filled with platitudes – use cakes filled with sugary goodness!

Jen over at Cake Wrecks has a fantastic post about some unusual uses of cakes to deal with life’s sadder moments: Link

Cake Wrecks has a roundup of cakes in which words just don’t fit. This one made me laugh -the line break would have been just fine if they had spelled it correctly! Link

Over yonder at our wide-format Neatorama Spotlight blog, our friend Jen Yates of Cake Wrecks has written a very neat post about some of the weirdest Star Wars cakes ever made: Link

A couple of weeks ago, we featured Jen Yates’ new book Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong, and promised to send a free book to a Neatoramanaut whose question got answered by Jen. Here’s her pick (and answer):

From Avid Cake Wreck Reader Rebecca: "I read on your site that you had taken cake decorating classes with your husband. I wondered if you ever posted one of your cakes as a wreck?"

And the answer is: Yes! You’d have to check the comment section to know this, but the infamous Epcot (aka Spaceship Earth) cake was made by me and John. That’s part of why it was so funny when so many commenters told me I was wrong to call it a Spaceship Earth cake. Yep, we got a *huge* kick out of that – and still do when readers make a "I think that’s Epcot" crack on a new post. Heh.

Thank you Jen and congratulations, Rebecca! See more at Jen’s blog Cake Wrecks

Neatorama Mystery Sale

It’s done! After two solid weeks of shipping, all shipments finally went out. Thank you to everyone who participated in the Mystery Sale!

If you haven’t gotten yours yet, please be patient: it may be in the last batch, which means that you should get it either by next week or early the following week (USA) or add a week for customs clearance for international destinations.

New at the Neatorama Shop

M-Cups, the measuring cups shaped like matryoshkas or Russian nesting dolls are HOT – we’ve sold out of the current batch and are waiting for our next shipment … if you order them today, we’ll add a little extra "mystery" bonus to your order.

Take cakes that are so bad they're good, mix in a great sense of humor and what do you get? A madly popular blog phenomenon, and now, a book as well! Jen Yates, the founder of Cake Wrecks, one of my all time favorite blogs, has graciously agreed to do an interview about cakes, the universe and everything.

But first: the book. As I'm sure you all probably already know or can guess, Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong is obviously about cake carnage. It chronicles some of the weirdest, silliest, creepiest and downright fugliest cakes ever made professionally (in order to be featured in the book and blog, each cake has to be made by a professional baker). There are over 150 cake wrecks included (3/4 of them never-before-seen material).

But there's something very subtle about the book that made me appreciate Jen and Cake Wrecks even more. This is something I came to realize only after I read the advance copy of the book (I know, I know, the perks of being a famous blogger). Cake Wrecks is actually the celebration of having a bad cake. It's an homage to Murphy's Law asserting itself over flour, sugar, egg and shortening mixed together
and popped in the oven.

Think about it: how many birthday parties have you gone to and not remember a whit of what happened? Now, if you had one where the cake was horribly wrong (but still very yummy) - wouldn't that stick in your memory forever? (I can imagine the conversation - Q: "Hey, remember that party with the foot cake?" A: "Yeah ... good times!")

'Nuff said. Let's get on with the interview:

Neatorama: Before we talk about cakes, I'm curious about what you wrote for the "About the Author" portion of Cake Wrecks, and I quote "Jen has been a clown, a cash office accountant, a Jungle Cruise skipper, a business owner, a children's book inventory expeditor, and a house painter."

Now, if you don't mind - a clown? Really? What's that like? Did you come up with your own Jungle Cruise skipper jokes? And just what the heck is a children's book inventory expeditor? Sounds like a smuggling ops.

Jen Yates: Hah! Yes, I do have some interesting "work" experience. Ok, let's see...being a clown? That can be surprisingly difficult, on account of your not being allowed to retaliate while being kicked in the shins by a horde of candy-seeking 9-year-olds. Heheh. Other than that it was a blast, though. I learned to juggle, make balloon animals, and perform funny skits. This was during my teens, so that's also where I first learned public speaking skills, believe it or not. We visited hospitals, shelters, expos, churches, you name it.

Jungle Cruise was also fabulous, and yes, we got to ad lib a bit. That's where my love of puns truly blossomed. There's this crashed plane on the ride, and I made a game of fitting as many plane puns as possible into the few seconds we had before it passed out of sight. (I think I got up to 8 or 9.) I wasn't happy until the whole boat was groaning in agony.

My other jobs were less glamorous. The expeditor gig? That was me in a cubicle calling various national warehouses to see if their shipment had arrived yet. Lots of spreadsheets. :)

Neatorama: What's the very first cake that got you thinking of creating Cake Wrecks - the cake that started it all?

The cake that started it all

Jen: Yes, that cake really and truly DID start it all. My friend Abby e-mailed it to me, and the idea for Cake Wrecks just hit me. I think I started the blog that very night, just for fun.

Neatorama: What's your favorite cake wrecks?

Jen: My favorites are usually the ones with the communication breakdowns. The literal stuff like the Under Neat that cake, and then the garbled phone order ones.

Cake submitted by Elizabeth R.

Remember the flash drive cake? That's the one where the customer wanted a photo cake, and so brought in the picture they wanted on a portable thumb drive for the bakery to print out. Instead, the bakery drew an exact replica of the flash drive on the cake! Heh, I LOVE stories like that.

Neatorama: Let's see some geek cred - what are the geekiest cake wrecks you've ever gotten?

Jen: Game console cakes are really popular, especially for grooms cakes, and I've seen some doosies:

Cake submitted by Monique B.

Cake submitted by Diane B.

Here are a few more geeky Wrecks:

Cake submitted by Maggie G.

Cake submitted by Kelly J.

Cake submitted by Gretchen W. (That's supposed to be Luigi, believe it or not)

And this one's not a Wreck, but I thought it was funny:

Cake submitted by Amy L.

I *think* that says happy birthday in binary. Am I right?

__________

Jen has kind enough to offer a free copy of the book for a giveaway - got any question for Jen? A lucky commenter with the most interesting question will win the book (I'll post Jen's reply as an update).

More wrecktastic blogger interviews with Jen Yates about her new book:

• Blogher with Julie Godar
• Serious Eats with Erin Zimmer
• The Pioneer Woman with Ree Drummond
• Geek Dad with Doug Cornelius

Links: Cake Wrecks | The Book at Amazon: Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong

Update 10/3/09 – Jen has picked the question to answer. Find out more here: Link

If you enjoy delicious-looking cakes or ones that look adorable, this mole rat cake is not for you. If you like the occasional bizarre and unusual cake on the other hand, than you might join me in saluting this monster treat. I have to wonder if the cake inside is red velvet with raspberry filling to help make it even more disturbing.

Link Via Ugly Overload

It’s bad, right? And the one paw appears to have six digits on it. In case you don’t know what the UK logo looks like, click the link. You’ll be stunned at the similarity.

Link

Cake Wrecks, the blog devoted to photos of mistakes in cakes, has been featured on Neatorama in the past.

But with the Super Bowl imminent, this seemed like an appropriate moment to take another look at some sports-related cake atrocities.

Link – via coldmud

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.