Woman asks for help making birthday cake for person she ‘cannot stand’
‘Help me be petty via cake,’ the woman asked on Reddit
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Kelly Rissman
US News Reporter
A woman has used her baking skills as a way to tell off a relative that she doesn’t like.
This week, a Reddit user with the username u/deloslabinc turned to the r/Baking forum to ask what kind of cake she should give to someone if she wants to be “petty”.
The woman began her post by sharing an image of a detailed, pink cake as a way to show off “the caliber of homemade baked goods” she normally brings to parties. However, the user explained that she doesn’t want to bake such an elaborate cake for this specific person’s birthday celebration.
“I’ve been asked to ‘bring the cake’ (like it’s no big deal) for a birthday party that’s less than 24 hours away for a person I cannot stand. It’s a family member, with a long history of awful behaviour,” she wrote. “Basically I’m trying to convey that my distaste for this person is justified to you all (that’s important to the story).”
She explained that the party will consist of 12 family members who “let themselves be pushed around and walked on by this d****e” and that she wasn’t planning on going to the party at all, until someone texted her asking if she could bring the birthday cake.
The woman then detailed what message she wanted the cake to send, in order to show the family member how she truly feels. “I’d like to bring a cake that very clearly conveys a ‘I did not put any effort into this cake because you’re not important to me’ vibe,” she wrote. “This person will not be greatful, regardless of what cake is brought. They also might leave the event before cake is even served because they’re that much of a d****e.”
She then asked the fellow users in the Reddit thread: “What’s the best thing I can bring that correctly conveys this vibe?”
The woman gave a few suggestions, such as buying a grocery store sheet cake because she’s “never brought anything except high quality, high effort, entirely scratch-made treats” or making an unfrosted cake in a flavour the birthday person doesn’t like. Still, she said that neither of those options “felt right” to her.
One Reddit user agreed that she should give the unfriendly person a sheet cake for their birthday. “A basic, ready-made grocery store cake,” they commented. “Nothing else says ‘f*** you’ in quite as tidy a way as having the whole party, including the a**hole, expecting someone will be going to a lot of effort to bake a cake for them, only to find that the baker grabbed something off the shelf. Don’t even have it personalised. Just, here’s your generic a** cake, jerk.”
Another person chimed in, suggesting that she buys a cake with a clearance sticker on it. Meanwhile, a baker at a grocery store wrote that she should have an employee who’s “really bad at writing on cakes” attempt at designing the baked good.
“I work at a grocery store bakery, I promise they have someone who is notoriously bad and banned from attempting again lol. Or if they have a trainee who has never ever done it and would like to give it their worst try. Then give them the wrong spelling of the name,” they wrote.
After taking all of their suggestions into consideration, the woman posted an update by showing off the finished cake. “I took what I think were all the best aspects of your advice,” she said, noting how she purchased a grocery store sheet cake with a clearance sticker on the corner of the package.
Here it is - my pre-party update from yesterday's post (aka petty via cake)
by u/deloslabinc in Baking
The person’s name was also written in black next to a period, instead of an exclamation point.
“Thank you all for helping me figure out what to do,” she shared in the follow-up post. “And I think it will be even more evident at the next birthday when I do bring a really big, beautiful, obviously homemade cake just how little effort was put into this one.
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