CCCs: The Canker Sores Of Civilized Society (aka, AND ANOTHER THING!!)
April 4, 2016 When John told me this week was Hate Week*, my first thought was, "Why do we even HAVE a hate week?" But I immediately realized:
BECAUSE CUPCAKE CAKES.
;)
(patooie!)
You see, sometimes I lay awake at night, afraid that you readers may STILL think cupcake cakes (patooie!) are not the spawn of Satan.
;)
I'm afraid I've been too soft on these vile canker sores of civilized society. That you minions may even think - and this really scares me - that I'm only kidding.
;)
IS THIS THE CCC (patooie!) OF A KIDDER?!
So this is it, minions. My last ditch Soap Box rant.
Let's review.
First, there's that "lovely lady lumps" texture:
;)
And if your "cake" ISN'T pockmarked with pot holes, it's because your baker did this:
;)
...to fill in all the gaps.
Bakers also use copious amounts of icing to stick the cupcakes in place:
;)
That's copious amounts of icing you have to dig through with your fingers to get the cupcake wrappers off.
So please, tell me again how cupcake cakes (patooie!) are easier and cleaner to serve.
Next there's the whole "flattened by Judge Doom's steamroller" issue:
;)
(If ONLY bakers had a way to make a perfectly round cake! [sob])
;)
And since bakers can't get their cupcakes into any kind of recognizable shape, many have given up trying altogether:
;)
What is it?
The world may never know.
;)
...but this one looks kinda dirty.
Happily, big bakery chains have responded by taking a critical look at the (many) problems of CCCs (patooie!), carefully evaluating potential solutions...
;)
...and then chucking more plastic on 'em.
But worst of all, minions - WORST of all - is the blatant, gleefully-kicking-us-while-we're-down cruelty represented in these particular abominations:
;)
I'm talking about cupcake cakes (patooie!) disguised as REAL CAKES.
;)
How do you light those candles? You don't. BECAUSE THIS WHOLE "CAKE" IS A LIE.
;)
This is like when you really want a steak, and someone gives you a hamburger patty with a picture of a steak taped to it.
They're even making cupcake cakes (patooie!) of real cupcakes:
;)
Which, ok, points for being totally meta, but otherwise?
NOOOOOooooOOOOOOOoooo
Look, my friends, I'm not saying that America as we know it will collapse into a slag heap of ruin if you ever buy another cupcake cake.
But I'm not saying it WON'T, either.
[meaningful glare]
So you think about that.
Thanks to Laurie G., Anna V., Sarah F., Deborah F., Lisa H., Cassandra T., Hillary H., Crystal, Michael G., Martina T., Chelsea, Tara C., Emily S., Julia K., & Paige C. for helping me write the longest CW post in the history of CW. John actually made me cut it down a bit. Because, oh yes, I HAVE MORE, PEOPLE .
*****
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*From George Orwell's 1984
Reader Comments (70)
So, I get that the top picture on the page is a football top - but why, with no shorts in sight, is there a massive, veiny, knobbly erection below it? Judging from the choice of sport, location and 'angle of elevation', it can't be a bat or anything so easily explained...
Noooooo
OK, I'm going out on a limb here and taking my imagination to the max.
That green, brown, and blobs of colour could maybe, and again, using my imagination here, maybe be a pot of flowers? Not saying it is of course, I'm just trying to make a little sense of what it cold possible be.
But then on the other hand, it could be a multi-eyed alien in a brown and green suit run over by steam roller!
We may never know for sure...
I hear you, Jen, and I'm with you!
Oh and I didn't fall for the fake post. Nice April fools!
Love!
LOL I think sometimes cupcake cakes are easier to make and to serve, and there are ways to make it cleaner to serve as well. With that being said, I understand your feelings towards these cupcake cakes, because they're not pretty or clean or resembling the shapes they're supposed to have. But one of these days, you might find one cupcake cake that will change it all for you =)
Wow. These look like the dreams I had when I had the flu. Thankfully, Jemaine and Bret have a message of hope for the bakers of this great land:
You don't have to make a cupcake cake
(No no no no no)
You can say no, to being a cake ho
(These CCCs blow)
You don't have to make a cupcake cake
(No no no no no)
You can say no to making those nuked fishies, flots-monkeys, blobboons, no, NO
I love the pony that passed out from all the CCC awfulness...
Why haven't bakers given up yet?
Hee! Feel better Jen, now that's off your chest? :)
I thought the third one was Garfield. Then I stared at it long enough to realize it's supposed to be Nemo.
I think the one above the dirty one is perhaps supposed to be flowers in a watering can...or maybe a demon. I'm not quite sure which.
I have NO clue what the dirty one is actually supposed to be. Looks like Gumby and Snuffleufagus had a baby -- which got run over by a car.
What on earth is that orange and white "thing"? Is that from Finding Nemo? Looks fishy to me.
If Picasso were a lazy baker with a drinking problem, he would have invented the CCC decades ahead of schedule.
I still find it so funny that bakers keep going to so much effort to be lazy while not seeming to realize that they are only making themselves work more slapping the CCC abominations together. Oh the IRONY!
That's a bit too far, don't you think?
After all, that's an insult to Satan, calling cupcake cakes his spawn. How could you?
@Monica-Why not just serve cupcakes? There's no need to torment them by trying to make them into something they're not. DO YOU HEAR THAT, MOM? Oh, sorry. Cupcakes. Cupcakes should be allowed to just be cupcakes.
Without the caption, the last one looked like a pair of undies to me, pink with a white sprinkley waistband -- maybe celebrating successful toilet training? (Okay, 8 may be a bit old for Baby's First Big Girl Panties.)
What is wrong with just plain cupcakes? Why try to make them something they're not?!?
Leave the cupcakes alone!
Much as I love cupcakes... I'm not sure I'd eat any of these. Oh who am I kidding. I'd eat them, but I'd mock them first.
If you want cupcakes, order cupcakes. If you want a cake, order a cake. Under NO circumstances should you order a CCC!
<blockquote cite="This is like when you really want a steak, and someone gives you a hamburger patty with a picture of a steak taped to it."
LOL!!! Spitting-coffee-on-my-screen LOL!
Urgo - The first cake is supposed to be a football helmet, not a shirt. So the white part is supposed to be the face mask. Supposed to be.
Also, I *think* the "dirty" one is supposed to be the number 3. Or a backwards E.
Sad that anyone would think you're joking about CCCs being evil and yet have the gall to claim to believe the Wilton April Fools thing and act offended about it. (I'm still mad on your behalf about that. You deserve much, MUCH better treatment after everything you've given us over all these years!)
Agreed, to the nth degree of agreement.
And we all know that most of the time it's not buttercream (as in "made of butter") but instead industrial goop scooped out of a 50-gallon vat that came from some factory. Who would want to eat that much "frosting" anyway? It's barely food at all. (Right, I am not a fan of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil as a food product.)
Is the monkey CCC proudly displaying its boobs!? Complete with nipples? That is all I can see there.
Ode to a CCC
What is it with you, mister baker?
You are nothing but a faker,
A CCC is but a poseur,
It is time for some exposure.
‘Tis not a pan but wrinkled wrappers
Not a pan, but batter trappers,
Little roundlets smashed together
With no concern as to whether
The shape they make you can distinguish,
(My cake passion you extinguish.)
All drenched in frosting,
(All sensibilities accosting),
Keeping it all stuck in place,
(O, the shame, O, disgrace)
O, cake batter was meant to flow
As Elsa says, “Let it go!”
Let it fill an entire pan.
Come on baker, do it man,
Make that thing a real cake,
Not a phony, CCC fake!
This is what I have to say now:
Can you not use a proper pan? Wow!
If I squint my eyes, the "what is it" cake takes on the fuzzy appearance of a blue-eyed smiling turtle with pink cheeks and a brown shell. With all the blue and red perhaps it's meant to be viewed with 3D glasses..
CCC 1: Uh?
CCC 2: Um?
CCC 3: Oh, good Lord!
CCC 4: No, that is NOT a football.
CCC 5: (Urp!)
CCC 6: Oh, my.
CCC 7: Has this person ever seen a baseball? I mean, really?
CCC 8: Balloons? Is that supposed to be balloons?
CCC 9: Not a clue.
CCC 10: Oh, that's the 11th, 12th, and 13th holes of Augusta National!! Yes!! Nailed it!
CCC 11: (shakes head)
CCC 12: Is that supposed to be a Christmas tree?
CCC 13: Parade float? Tank?
CCC 14: At least it is pretty.
CCC 15: A cupcake cake of a cupcake. Whatever happened to putting icing on a cupcake. With sprinkles.
A sad day. Just sad.
Well, I get 1984 (the book) and Brave New World mixed up sometimes...but either way, I couldn't remember a steamroller. Huh...Anyway, I have to hand it to the teddy mini grahams vacation shot. They're all just placidly floating around w/o a care in the world (a.k.a. "patio"). Yet, lurking the perimeter are a dozen hurricanes ready to sweep all of the "happy" into a sticky oblivion....("Save yourselves, terrified plastic flotsam!") BTW: How DOES one tape anything to a steak? =^-.-^=
Well, I get 1984 (the book) and Brave New World mixed up sometimes...but either way, I couldn't remember a steamroller. Huh...Anyway, I have to hand it to the teddy mini grahams vacation shot. They're all just placidly floating around w/o a care in the world (a.k.a. "patio"). Yet, lurking the perimeter are a dozen hurricanes ready to sweep all of the "happy" into a sticky oblivion....("Save yourselves, terrified plastic flotsam!") BTW: How DOES one tape anything to a steak? =^-.-^=
I think the one above "Lady Lumps Football" is "Mutie Nemo".
I worked at Target in the bakery for a (short) while decorating cakes. One day, someone who was working on a shift other than the bakery shift took an order for "24 Saturn cupcake", which I took to mean 24 cupcakes that looked (vaguely) like Saturn.
When the mother came in to pick them up, she got all huffy with me and said, "I wanted a cupcake cake! You RUINED by son's first birthday!" No joke. That's what she said.
I work in insurance now. I couldn't handle that kind of pressure.
What is number 7 supposed to be? Frankenstein's Turkey badly undercooked and served with brussels sprouts?
O mel, so VERY glad to have you back. Have I already said that?
Patooie!
Diana, if you see this please let me know what on earth the mother wanted for her son's first birthday? A cake decorated with a drawing of the planet Saturn seems a bit mature for one year. This inquiring mind really wants to know!
I've heard people say they like them for picnics or situations where nobody has a knife handy to cut a cake. Some people are also completely fine slurping icing off their fingers. Most of these people are children, but some adults are totally fine with it too.
I really never thought there was anything sadder than losing a balloon as a child. But clearly, I was wrong because, well, cupcake balloons (patooie). Sob. Choke.
Really? This is the longest CW post? Because I feel that there have other posts just as long. Or longer. Anyway, patooie!
The first one makes perfect sense. The blue part is the Five Boroughs, and the long red and white thing is Long Island, with the Long Island Expressway delineated in red.
Right below that is the cake that illustrates the book I just read: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
Yay, Mel! My CW day is always made better when there's a Mel opus in the comments. It's like the icing on the...well, you know.
A CCC in the shape of a "cake"? That's just an insult to real cakes!
But a CCC in the shape of a cupcake is just an extra waste of time and a pointless mess of frosting. What the Sam scratch are bakers (and, apparently, customers) thinking? JUST SERVE YOUR GUESTS INDIVIDUAL CUPCAKES THAT ARE SEPARATE! PLEASE!
Cupcakes are adorable! A little bit of yummy frosting and a few sprinkles and you have a perfect little portable cake. Very much unlike CCCs which are a nightmare consisting of gallons of frosting goo that more often looks like colored poo, a plethora of sprinkles and a dumptruck load of food dye. Now doesn't that sound delicious?
I like the passed out pony on #2. Poor thing just couldn't take it anymore.
When did Nemo become a flounder with 2 eyes on the same side of his head?
Baseballs and balloons should NOT be assembled out of cupcakes!
The "dirty" one kind of reminds me of that weird eyelid thing in Dali's The Persistence of Memory with the melting clocks and such.
That is one crazy mutant monkey! Hands and feet don't really seem to be in anatomically possible positions and is he/she holding up boobs or balls or coconuts? Never mind. I don't think I want to know!
[P.S. Are you sure last week wasn't "Hate Week" with all the fallout from your facetious but wildly misinterpreted April Fool's post? :) ]
Kudos, MEL! Your Ode is wonderful! Perhaps in the grand scheme of things the reason for the existence of CCCs is just so that we can enjoy more of Jen and John's wit and Mel's creativity. I do agree with some commenters that a cupcake can be very good when it's JUST a cupcake. Let it be, let it be. Speaking words of wisdom: "Let it be."
mel! Welcome back!
i agree cupcake cakes are not natural...but cupcakes in their natural form are wonderful.
The Green and Brown thing is supposed to be a basket of flowers. It's sideways.
Don't ask how I know that.
Also, don't ask where that wreckerator learned what flowers look like. Because I don't want to know.
My husband just told me, he was CupCakeCake-Curious in college. The things you find out AFTER the wedding!!
Probably the only CCC that should be allowed is of Lumpy Space Princess because oh my glob she's all about the lumps.
@ Diana
I could easily make a round sphere cake, with the addition od a disk of sugar cookie, that would look like the planet Saturn.
Why would anyone want a misshapen monstrosity pretending to be a circle with a circle around it?
BTW I've never seen so many rorshack tests and Humperdinks all in the same place before. Aren't you afraid of creating ugly critical mass and destroying the internet?
What IS that monkey holding???