In May 2008, a few days after my thirtieth birthday, I got an e-mail that made me laugh. You’ve probably seen it; it was one of those viral funnies that got forwarded about a billion times, and probably is still making the rounds. Heck, I bet right now someone in Bangladesh is chortling while forwarding this thing on to everyone in her address book. Anyway, on the off chance you haven’t seen it, the photo in the e-mail looked something like this:
It’s not hard to imagine the phone order that led to this cake. What is hard to imagine is how someone could transcribe the order so literally and yet manage to misspell it at the same time. Is there something profound at work here? Some great social commentary on the mind-numbing qualities of low-paying, repetitious work?
Or are people just dumb sometimes?
Whatever the reason, it’s funny stuff. Nothing monumental, of course, but a good gag to chuckle over before moving on to that business proposition from the prince of Nigeria.
And yet, as I looked at it that day, a little light-bulb went on. Then I got an idea. I already had some other funny cake photos saved from my searches for inspirational designs for my cake-decorating class. So I started thinking, what if I posted these online somewhere? What would I say? The answers made me chuckle. (Sure, I laugh at my own jokes. Doesn’t everyone?)
“Hey, what do you think of the name ‘Cake Wrecks’?” I called to my husband. “You know, like ‘train wreck,’ only with ‘cake’?”
“I like it,” he said, popping his head into my office. “Why? Are you going to put those on a blog?”
“Yeah, I think so. You know, just for fun.”
And just like that, Cake Wrecks was born.
I waited about a week before I told anyone about it. By then scouring the Net for more pictures each night was my new hobby. It was fun; I relished the hunt, and I loved snarking on what I found. Posting everything anonymously made it all the sweeter, because it gave my rather wicked sense of humor free rein. (I’m actually painfully polite in person—ask anybody.) When I did e-mail a few friends the site address, I kept it pretty low-key. (In fact, when my mother-in-law first started reading the site, she had no idea I was the author.) I wasn’t out to attract readers, and I certainly knew nothing about professional blogging: This was purely something for my own amusement.
After posting for several weeks, I was shocked one night to find a comment on the site from someone I didn’t know. Even though it was very complimentary, initially I was actually a bit consternated. People I didn’t know were reading my blog! But as more comments started trickling in over the next few weeks, I realized these people I didn’t know actually liked it. I was thrilled, and suddenly the thought of strangers reading my blog didn’t bother me nearly as much.
The weekend of July 4 someone posted a link to Cake Wrecks on the message board of a large cake community Web site. Traffic shot up: I’m talking like two hundred people a day, peeps! I’d hit the big time! Even better, people started e-mailing me photos. I had thought there wasn’t enough material out there to keep Cake Wrecks afloat for more than a few months. My faithful Wreckporters, as I came to call them, proved me wrong and saved the site from an early demise.
The next month saw some huge spikes in readership thanks to links from a few other major Web sites, and the site traffic continued to grow by staggering leaps and bounds. By this time I was using my first name on posts, since being completely anonymous was confusing for readers, and soon I was getting requests for interviews and even some media coverage. “Flabbergasted” is the best word to describe my reaction over the next few months. Considering I never advertised the site in anyway, its growth and success were really nothing short of astounding. By February ‘09, over fifty thousand people from around the globe were reading Cake Wrecks every day, with hundreds of e-mails arriving each month.
So what is it about messed-up cakes that people find so appealing? I can’t say for sure, but I think it has something to do with the fact that almost all of us have a cake story to tell. Maybe it was that Barbie or He-Man cake you were so thrilled with on your seventh birthday, or the ridiculous homemade heap your roommate made to cheer you up after so-and-so dumped you, or your oh-so-perfect wedding cake—the one Uncle Jerry knocked over at the reception during his drunken rendition of the “Thriller” dance. Good or bad, these cakes tell little stories about us. So when we see a cake with the inscription “Sorry for all those things we said” or one that’s shaped like a toilet plunger, we know there’s probably a story behind it, too—and if we’re lucky, a really funny one. Whether we get that story or are left having to imagine it, these little slices of flawed humanity can make us feel more connected to each other. Hey, everyone’s a little stupid sometimes, right? And we’ve all made mistakes. Cake Wrecks remind us to never take ourselves too seriously, and that nothing in life is a total loss if it makes you smile.
If you’re already familiar with Cake Wrecks, you’ll be happy to know that this book is more than just the blog put to paper. Here you’ll learn a bit more about me, the Wrecks, the people who make the Wrecks, the people who find the Wrecks, and some of the best “cake disaster” stories out there. I’ll also fill you in on the crazy controversies you never knew cake could create, the “fun” side to Internet trolls, and how Wreckporters are terrorizing local bakeries. I’ll even answer the question “what was she thinking?” for some of the most (and least) popular Wrecks. And don’t worry; there will also be lots (and lots) of new, never-before-seen Wreckage. I wouldn’t leave out the feature presentation, now, would I?