With presumably no one buying specialty cakes during the pandemic, cake decorators have gotten bored. So like many bored people, they turned to terrorizing the internet.
The trend took off when Tasty posted a compilation of creations by Turkish baker Tuba Geçkil, featuring a Croc, a roll of toilet paper, a plant, and others, all made out of- surprise- cake. Other similar clickbaity accounts began following suit.
Others responded with various parodies of the trend.
Some were more… existential that others…
In a way, I think that sort of encompasses why this meme has taken off like this. I’ve written before about how food memes (and memes in general) can reflect on the state of society, and this is no exception.
Let’s face it, 2020 has been a garbage fire of a year, with some new catastrophe coming each month. The fact that “murder hornets are on the attack” was a minor footnote that lasted, like, 2 days demonstrates just how absurd everything has become. After all this, you’re telling me my arm is also made out of cake? Might as well, this can’t get any more goddamn weird.
It’s also worth noting that the trend has also reignited some people’s contempt for this style of cake decorating. My family will often watch episodes of Netflix’s “Nailed It” together and it never fails at least once an episode someone will blurt out something like “that’s all rice krispies and modelling chocolate, where’s the cake?” There’s also the debate on whether fondant sucks or sucks a lot. (No, really, the only arguments I’ve seen are “it’s bad” and “wait, you’re supposed to eat that part??”) Does this style of cake decorating just serve to distract from the fact that the cake itself was mediocre? Or is the cake fine, and I’m just salty and the bourgies who can afford to buy one of these hyper-realistic cakes? (Hint: it’s the second one.)
Anyway, here’s my contribution to the mess:
I can’t believe I brought fondant into my house for this.
Is that, uh, zucchini beans cake? It deserves all the love Twitter can muster up for it.
That it is. Twitter didn’t seem to appreciate my genius, but it fared a little better on Tumblr.
