Since I am just starting out, I am sure I will have MANY more oopsies and I can't BELIEVE I made thats. The chocolate one was for DH birthday a few years ago. I (for Some reason) thought that melting the icing would be a GREAT idea. I could just pour it on and be done....The cake cracked and fell apart. My MIL brought one from the grocery store fortunatly.
The second one is really recent. A friend called at 10pm and wanted a cake for the next day at 4. I already had a cake scheduled but thought hey, I can do it. Well I had some unforseen disasters with the first cake and this is what I came with on short notice. What doesn't show here is that when I delivered it, the icing had melting and poured all down the sides of the cake. I took it in crying and apologising profusley! Somehow I don't think she will call me again.......

I was just going to post a thread about my worst cake. So I'll just stick it here, cause lord knows I don't want it in my gallery.

So this was my first cake ever with fondant (wilton yuk!!), first stacked, painted everything. I had completely forgotten about it actually, until about a couple of weeks ago when I found the horrible picture as I was rearranging my office/guest room.

Ok, so I baked the cakes, filled them as usual. I rolled out the fondant and put in on the cakes. Did I mention this was all before I found CC, so there was no crumb coat of anything. Just fondant over cake. I thought, huh! That's weird it doesn't stick to the cake so good (I wonder why?). I then proceeded to stack the cakes, NO dowels. (Uh? what are dowels). I refrigerate the cakes, while I figure out how I am gonna paint the food color onto the fondant. I had asked for help that day at one of my local cake shops and the little old lady working there had NO idea what I was talking about. I keep thinking to myself "haven't you ever watched food network cake challenges?". She has not, I'm sure. Any hoo, I have the powder color and I mixed it with water. It'looked weird, almost like it wasn't mixing up. I take the cake out of the frige and start to "paint". With every swipe of the brush the color beads up and I am noticing a slimmy texture to my fondant. I continue on and reapply color in areas and am baffled by my sweaty cake. I shrug my shoulders and say, "I guess that's what it should look like?" Finally, I apply my stringy fabric trim to the tops of my tiers and stick the final paper images of a butterfly and straberry to the top of my sweaty, sticky, fuzzy, pink zebra striped cake. I stick it again into the fridge until, everyone arrives for the party. I then take it out and notice that it is wrinkled and the top tier is sinking into the bottom tier. Oh Lordy! This was the funkiest cake I ever did see, and the taste? OH THE TASTE. God aweful! I know I couldn't get past the outside flavor to even try and enjoy the strawberry creamcheese filling and white cake, so my guess is no one else could either as they happily eat my disgusting cake.

And this is why this cake will only be seen here in the forum and not in my gallery, Thank you and good night

Just a side note: sorry for my spelling and punctuation, english and creative writting was not my best subjects ever and I continue to struggle with them to this day.

OMG SweetTcakes I was so expecting to see something just hideous based on your buildup...actually it's kinda cute. Hairy, but cute! Sorry to hear that it tasted awful - that's the one thing that usually saves us huh, "at least it tasted good." Did you actually watch your guests trying to eat that icky Wilton fondant?

Yes, they took a little bite and then started to eat around it. Needless to say, no one wanted 2nd's. LOL!

I TOO AM LIKE IAINEE. I HAVE HAD PLENTY OF BAD CAKES BUT WHEN I KNOW THEIR BAD I DON'T TAKE A PICTURE OF THEM. I REMEMBER LAST YEAR I TRIED TO DO A HAUNTED HOUSE LIKE THE ONE IN A WILTONS BOOK AND I HAD JUST SEEN AN EPISODE OF ACE OF CAKES AND DECIDED I WAS GOING TO LIGHT THE CAKE UP. WELL THE HOUSE WAS SO SLANTED AND HRRIBLE LOOKING AND I CUT THE CENTER OUT AND PUT A LARGE SPOT LIGHT BULB IN THE MIDDLE. THE ENTIRE CAKE WAS BUTTERCREAM AND NOT THE CRUSTED KIND. NEEDLESS TO SAY AFTER ABOUT AN HOUR THE CAKE WAS SO HOT IT FELT LIKE IT JUST CAME OUT OF THE OVEN. EVERYONE LIKED THE CAKE AND THOUGHT I MAD THE CAKE SLANT ON PURPOSE BECAUSE IT WAS A HAUNTED HOUSE. I HATED THE CAKE SO MUCH I NEVER TO A PICTURE OF IT AND DID NOT ALLOW MY SISTER-IN-LAW TO TAKE A PICTURE OF IT EVEN THOUGH IT WAS HER DAUGHTERS CAKE. I DIDN'T WANT ANYONE TO KNOW IT WAS MY CAKE I WAS SO EMBARASSED

ok, I avoided posting this but here goes..........

Arghh!!!

Here is mine haha it's my first cake ever decorated before any classes - I had no idea what leveling was! It was for my son's 1st Birthday.

well, considering that was your first cake ever and never took any classes, it's a good cake

HI I think the same thing.. Dont think its bad at all !!!

jess....the pirate, well don't take this wrong but there is just something about...

the stubble,
the fruit roll up shirt...I used that too!!
the buck teeth
no, it's the ears, yes, the ears are just cracking me up!

Thank you so much for sharing, he's wonderful!

big hugs for you!!
mommachris

Ok I've just spent two hours reading this thread and even though I'm a year behind here is my worst cake that I took a photo of, there were others but thankfully they are now but a distant memory....

ok I have two, they are both in my gallery as well but here they are. Both make me cringe every time I see them.

Now I don't feel so bad about this ugly thing!! I had 2 days notice..... 1 day really since it was late at night when I found out.... I was totally freaking out about time and .... well, needless to say I don't work well under pressure!

venefica!!

get that cake out of here!
only ugly cakes on this post.

Man, I wish I could work like that under pressure!

mommachris

Take your pick, mine al stink...
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-photos-by-madgeowens.html

I want to cry every time I look at this cake. It was my Wilton 3 final but it looks awful. It was a terribly rainy and humid day to begin with, then I had major issues with the frosting while transporting and assembling it. Then I kept sticking my fingers in the frosting while trying to decorate it. The bow is awful. I was going to do it out of fondant but ran out of time to make the fondant and tried to make it out of candy clay. Yeah, bad idea. I think it was a cute concept, but didn't come off well at all. My favorite parts are the bee and sunflower.

Here it is:
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_453563.html

Okay I found them! I thought they were gone forever but the memory card turned up! In a box in a house about to be demolished! YEAH!! (actually there were about 296 other photos too so I really am glad to have the card back!) These cakes were made for my DD's 3rd birthday! Can you guess the theme of the party?

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_1138313.html

Okay, I finally got my old pictures scanned so I can upload what I think is my worst cake. This is my very first cake ever done. Seriously. No Wilton classes. I just did regular cakes (like a simple 2 layer cake with store-bought icing thrown on top in no design because I couldn't even get my knife to do the swirly pattern) before this one. I don't really know why I decided it would be so easy to do. Obviously, the icing isn't smooth, the 2 cakes put together aren't level and I had the worst time getting the cake cracks from showing. It's my first attempt at roses and they were too soft. My icing bag busted as I was finishing the greenery on site so I ran to the store and bought some green gel to finish it.

It was for my parent's 25th Anniv and was done back in 2001. Oh, the fun of being naive.

I also think this cake is an awful one. I made this cake for my grandparent's 50th Anniversary back in 2004. I was very inexperienced at cake decorating but that I'd give it a shot. This is a Collette Peters' design. I made her fondant from the book. After I got the fondant made, my grandparents got sick so my mom threw the fondant in the freezer. Okay, this was before CC and I couldn't jump online to find out what to do with the fondant. A month later, the fondant was horribly dry and cracked. I had no idea how to work with it. Please enjoy the noticeable gap on the side of the cake and the cracking. Please don't laugh (too hard!). I also tried to do royal icing for the snowflakes onto the sucker sticks. Those kept breaking so I switched to making snowflake suckers. The cute little stand supporting the snowflakes on the top tier (oh, yeah, did I mention this was my first time with a tiered cake?) was made out of sugar and water. I actually had a lot of fun making those.

Oh man, it took me a few days to get through all this... Even with the servers being moved, it was definitely worth the wait! The chewbacca with the booties, the melting teletubbies... HA!!! Had me in STITCHES!!!

I just HAD to post this cake. My sister is the one who actually did it, but she's okay with posting the picture online...

My sister was living with me last summer, which happens to be when my birthday is. She got some cake stuff from my mom, which included my favorite icing: coconut pecan... However, my sister doesn't like that icing, so she thought, "I'll just put that on HALF the chocolate cake, and put some white icing on the rest!" After getting that done, she thought it needed a little something, and found my food coloring sprays... So, using a toothpick and my red and orange spray, she made what we dubbed "The Creepy Russian Guy"...

I don't know how to resize the photos to get them here, but they are in my photos...

My grandmother took Wilton method classes about 25 years ago and I learned basic decorating from her. When I made this cake for my niece's birthday in 2006, I had not attempted to decorate a cake in MANY years, at least 15 years. I need to say that I work overnight in a call center (12 hour shifts). I baked the cake before I went to work and decorated it when I got home the next morning.

The cake looked OK for a 5 year old's party when I finished it, especially for a family party, but not a cake I would take out in public. Since I had worked all night the night before finishing the cake, when I was done, I left the cake in the care of the other adults and headed upstairs to take a nap. What a mistake! One picture shows the back of the cake after she got a hold of it (it had been the front), and what became the front.

Notice the really bad smoothing job, and the uneven bodice of the dress.

Please note that all continuing posts to this thread are somewhat lost in the virtual ether due to the CC Database Crash of March 14, 2008. If you can somehow get into this thread, you can post here but it is really hard for anyone to actually locate your post.

So here's my special request (if you can read this!) - don't post to this thread anymore! I've started a Part II continuation thread here: http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopicp-5858316.html

Thanks, and now please head over to that new thread and post some bad cakes!!

This thread is great!  It just goes to show everyone has to start somewhere.  I've always wondered, from seeing gorgeous cakes, how otherwise artistic cake decoraters are. And I've eaten (which is the end goal anyway) some really pretty cakes that were really not good.

AI dont think you guys know what hideous means- THIS is hideous [IMG]http://cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3093821/width/200/height/400[/IMG] This was my first ever square cake and boy was it bad!! It was lopsided, buttercream was melting, my swirls looked like something i dont even want to mention but it did taste good though!