When the Icing on the Cake Spells Disaster

SOMEONE who decorates cakes for a living should possess certain skills. Spelling is an important one. For example, success is not quite as sweet when the inscription reads, “Contralulation’s Ronan.” An eye for color helps, too. Piped dark brown swirls are never a good idea on a cake dotted with plastic farm animals. Finally, a few words about customer service: When someone requests that nothing be written on the cake, “NOTHING” should not be written on the cake.

For those working outside these margins, there is Cake Wrecks, Jen Yates’s popular blog and new book of the same name (Andrews McMeel, $12.99), celebrating the folly of professional confections gone horribly, horribly wrong. Think of them as epic fails, with frosting. There are Hello Kitty cakes that look more like gerbils with glandular problems, fondant ribbons gnarled into hideous nests, and squishy inscriptions that read, “Happy 3th Birthday, Evan.” As Ms. Yates, 31, defines it, a Cake Wreck is “any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate — you name it.”

“I can’t get my brain around what’s happening in bakeries out there, but something very wonky is going on,” Ms. Yates said by telephone recently. “Wonky” is a favorite term on her site, as in the wonky Curious George cake that looks more like Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy. Sometimes, the wonkiness lies in the sentiment being expressed, as in the cake inscribed, “Sorry for all those things we said.”

Then there was the wonky miscommunication that started it all. In May 2008, a friend e-mailed Ms. Yates a photo of a sheet cake that looked like a prop from “The Office.” It was not. Amid marzipan flowers, the cursive inscription was a profound reminder of the perils of ordering supermarket cakes by phone.