Birthday cakes have become a major deal. Long gone are the days of whipping up a simple box cake. It's become a more extravagant practice, which leads to a lot of interesting and beautiful work. It can also lead to some pretty epic cake fails, as seen on Netflix's Nailed It! One woman experienced a birthday cake fail when she ordered her daughter a personalized cake from Walmart.
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Melin Jones went to Walmart to get her little girl a cake for her birthday. Her daughter, Liz, is nicknamed Lizard. She wanted to put her nickname on the cake, so she instructed the Walmart bakery to write "Happy Birthday Lizard!" on the cake. She didn't check the cake before loading it into her car. When she took a closer look at the cake at home, she realized that the decorator had missed the mark on her little girl's name. She was mad at first, but once she posted the picture of the fail online, she saw the funnier side of the mistake.
Cake decorating used to be a hobby that was exclusively for stay-at-home moms and pastry chefs. As celebrations become more elaborate, however, so have cakes. Now it seems like people need a super-specific, decked-out cake for every occasion.
The only downside to these elaborate cakes can be the cost. A cake for a birthday party used to be a matter of going to the store and buying cake mix for a few bucks. Now, people dedicate hundreds of dollars or more to these masterful creations.
Some people still prefer a simple sheet cake. They look nice, are easy to find, and can feed quite a few people at once. Still, even the simplest cake designs have room for errors. One mom found that out the hard way when she went to her local Walmart to order a birthday cake.
Merlin Jones was looking for a cake for her daughter's second birthday. The little girl's name is Liz, but her nickname is Lizard. Merlin instructed the bakery at her local Walmart to write "Happy Birthday Lizard" on the cake.
Merlin didn't check the cake before bringing it home with her. She didn't give that decision a second thought until she got a closer look at the cake. She then realized the bakery employee had misheard her request.
The "Happy Birthday Loser" cake initially upset the mom. She posted about it on Facebook, where people helped her see the lighter side of the silly error. A year after the fact, she reposted the story, and it went viral, even getting the meme treatment.
Don't worry about Liz, either. She got a new cake to celebrate with and was none the wiser about the error. "We paid for a new cake. It was my fault for not checking it when it was handed to me and not the lady who heard me wrong. We made sure to just use her name on the second cake," her mom wrote on the now-viral post.
While the loser cake is quite a notable fail, it's far from the first or last one to happen. Whether it's being misheard by a bakery employee or someone having a less-than-stellar spelling day, accidents happen all the time. Some of the time, they're even funny.
When there's art involved, cake decorators are trusted to take their creative liberties to make something great. They sometimes miss the mark, however. This cake was decorated for a child's superhero-themed birthday party but comes across more like something PG-13.
Even providing a photo to work from can't guarantee a perfect result. Some decorators are simply out of their depth, and some works of art aren't easily duplicated. This Great Gatsby book cover cake falls under both those categories.
Then there are cakes that don't look like a typical cake, and these should be reserved for experts. You can't fault an amateur baker for trying, of course, but you also have to expect amateur results. This cake was supposed to be an Infinity Gauntlet from Avengers, but it looks more like French toast.
Sometimes you can't even figure out how a misunderstanding of such epic proportions occurs. Take this person, who shared the photo image she wanted on the cake on a thumb drive, only to find a picture of the thumb drive on the cake.
When you encounter a baking fail, your reaction might be to get angry. However, we're all human and more than capable of mistakes. Someone else's fail could easily be your own under different circumstances, so it's important to take it all in stride.
Whether a fail is the result of a misunderstanding or an earnest attempt at being hilarious, you have to learn to see the brighter side of things. You may not get the cake of your dreams, but you might also end up with a funny story that you'll never forget.