"When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong." - cakewrecks.blogspot.com

Last week The New York Times ran an article called, "When the Icing on the Cake Spells Disaster" about the uber-popular blog, Cake Wrecks, hosted by Jen Yates. Although countless disasterous cakes have been featured on her site since it began in May 2008, we were tickled to see our submission mentioned by a fan of the site. 

Ms. Mattson brought along a cupcake replica she made of her favorite cake mistake on the blog. It is known as the Olympics Rings cake.

"The person had probably called up and said, ‘Can you put Olympic rings on my cake?' " Ms. Mattson explained.

Enjoying what feels like secret fame, we felt it was time to tell our story.

Over the past year plus, I have often thought back to that fated afternoon in early August, wondering what went wrong. I was driving back from a lunch in downtown Lexington. On my way, I remembered I needed to order the cake for our company's party in two days, so I figured I may as well stop and do it in person, while I was already out. Because of our company's name, we were kind of excited that 08/08/08 was approaching. It fell on a Friday, and the Beijing Olympics were opening that night. Seriously, we didn't need anymore excuses to have a party.

I walked into the grocery store bakery and placed an order for a full sized sheet cake per my boss Chad's request: "I would like the Olympic rings prominently displayed in the middle of the cake." I watched them write down the instructions. I briefly wondered if the decorator would know the correct placement of colors for the rings, but I had made this stop on a whim, and I didn't know them off the top of my head either. Plus, she didn't ask. I figured "They're professionals. If they don't know, they probably look these things up on the Internet. Isn't that what everybody does?" I walked out to my car, checked that off my mental to-do list and drove back to work.

Two days later, I'm sitting in my office. My boss is over at his house, preparing for the party that evening. I had already been over there once to scope out the decorating, so when my phone rings and I see it's his wife, I'm a little surprised.

Me: "Hey Amy... What do you need?"
Amy: "You have to get over here right away."
Me: "Is something wrong? Do you really need me right now?"
Amy: "Just get over here right now."

Bewildered, I grab my keys, tell the guys I'll be right back, and head out. Over the two mile drive, my brain tries to fathom what could be wrong. As it was a windy day, I imagined the outdoor decorations in disarray. But keep in mind that she's there with Chad, and her parents, and I am 25 weeks pregnant with swollen ankles. What could they possibly need from me at this point? And why couldn't she tell me over the phone? I'm drawing a huge blank.

But as I walked up to the house, I suddenly remembered the cake, and that Amy's dad was going to pick it up around lunch. Dread creeps in. "Crap, what did I order? The Olympic rings logo... what could they have done?" My imagination worked overtime as they ushered me over to the cake, with looks on their faces capturing a perfect mix of disbelief, delight, and anticipation. In the five second walk, the worst thing I could come up with was that all the rings would be in the same color. Instead, this is what I see:

I was incredulous. At first, one honestly doesn't know whether to be mad or to roll on the ground with laughter. After a brief moment of shock, I chose laughter. After all, this was not a wedding cake, important birthday or other solemn occasion that they messed up. As a fellow employee said, "This is the BEST thing that could have EVER happened to our party!"

Within days, our pride and joy of hilarity had made it to the laugh-out-loud funny blog some of us had come upon earlier in the week: Cake Wrecks. We enjoyed a weird sort of fame, as people linked to our picture on every social networking site you can think of. It was hilarious and it was all ours. This. Was. Awesome.

In the middle of all the fun, I couldn't help but feel a little defensive. Online, people I didn't know were making assumptions about how I must have ordered the cake, possibly alluding to my own idiocy. I didn't have an airtight defense admittedly - I hadn't exactly drawn them a picture. I hadn't spelled out the color of each ring. All I had done was assumed a certain level of intelligence and common sense when I walked into that bakery.

They added the parentheses and quotation marks all on their own.