Last Call: There's Nothing Like A Good Cake Fail

What is it about a cake wreck that's so funny, every single time? Maybe it's that, in the era of programming like Cake Boss and Ace Of Cakes and Cake Wars, we think of all professional bakers as unmatched talents who elevate their craft to artistry—and bad cakes remind us that, in fact, lots of bakers are less than amazing at their jobs, just like us. Or it could be that bakers, like us, experience miscommunications with colleagues and customers, or they lack the resources they need to make the cake they were hoping to, or they are simply overworked and can't always summon the energy to produce a picture-perfect unicorn horn. Whatever the case, these bakery fails are delightful, and while we should never cast aspersions on the individual cake makers, surely we can all see the humor in, say, the universal struggle to portray Mickey Mouse accurately.

Requesting text on a cake is always a crapshoot, since a phone call to a loud, busy bakery won't always result in the perfect translation of your intended message. This is the type of cake fail that popped up on Reddit last week, when a user posted about a cake whose message accidentally became a message about COVID-19 prevention (h/t to NDTV for first making us aware of the post).

The cake, which was supposed to say "Wiser Wedding," instead read "Why's There A Wedding?" which is a fair question, since gathering in large groups is still a huge transmission risk in most places. Even if this is one of those possibly fake Reddit posts, it's fun to think about a grocery store baker surreptitiously using their powers for the greater good. (I also take issue with the photo caption "This is why you hire professionals," because a grocery store bakery is plenty professional, and any cake maker could have made the same mistake, or "mistake.")

Have you ever received a cake that was not at all what you were expecting? And if so, were you able to laugh about it, either in the moment or many, many years later?