I try not to get all judge-y about what other people choose to do for entertainment, because there is no room for skeletons in my closets (basement, attic, garage, or shed) given all the hoarded craft supplies & collectibles I’ve stashed away. But has the economy really improved so much that people are going to spend $350 on a dedicated cake decorating stenciler?
Are there really enough cake-worthy occasions in the average American household to require spending a week’s minimum-wage salary to decorate them adequately?
Could we have inadvertently discovered the cause of the “obesity epidemic” that all the kewl media kids are talking about?
And aren’t there better ways to spend a sunny spring Sunday?
anthony
but think of all the money that’s not going to big bakery and their government flunkies
DPirate
Are you kidding? If you make but one purchase this year, it should be this. Hell, it makes every occasion special!
MTiffany
Only for those people that fancy themselves ‘master chefs’ of the pastry *and* home variety — and are also probably cast members of one of Bravo’s atrocious, craptastic Real Housewhores of Tawdryville ‘reality’ series. I smell product placement for the next season of Top Chef. Or is that coming from the de rigeur sous vide or ceviche of each and every TC episode?
Mike Kay
let them eat stenciled cake.
de stijl
Marie Antoinette sez, “Let them eat cake decorating stencils.”
The Sham-Wow guy sez, “It’s made in Germany. You always know the Germans make good stuff.”
de stijl
@Mike Kay:
Sorry. Didn’t mean to step on your joke.
Tattoosydney
Stenciling a cake? No way. However, baking a cake all afternoon and then having it for dessert during first run Doctor Who is an entirely valid way of spending the day.
fucen tarmal
a 350 dollar investment that allows an individual to make a product at home, that competes with a product made by the supermarket, walmart, whatever bakery(the old fashioned brick and mortar, bakery only type place has gone the way of hardware stores and butcher shops with few exceptions)
a classic cottage industry. you compete on the main feature of the large bakery and every thing else(a fancy doo-dad that can make a cake with a picture of your daughter’s trampstamp on it for her 16th birthday) but you retain some control either over the ingredients in the batter, or the other hassles of ordering mccake…in exchange the home baker gains popularity, perhaps money etc…
also too, lets not forget about all the stencils a corporate cakery won’t do, never under estimate the value of the mildly deviant.
Justin
I work for a national online retailer, and can attest that the well-off in America are still buying as much of this crap as ever. I always know the type, because they will spend hundreds on a device like this or thousands on a new big screen TV and then spend 20 minutes arguing with me on the phone over the shipping costs or that $50 promotion they weren’t eligible for.
Starfish
Oh goody. I thought I was the only one curious about such things. I am sure that the person who would buy that is the same person who would buy a $350 professional stencil cutting machine for their scrapbooking hobby. Note all the accessories that are not included and the fact that it is sold out.
MTiffany
Just read about the car bomb in Times Square — I’m putting my money on the Teabagger Taliban.
Geoduck
@MTiffany:
At least no one died, but man, just what we really really didn’t right now..
Maude
@MTiffany:
And the mayor had his face all over the place.
The vendor is the one who spotted it.
The hotel guests spent the night on the street.
Good thing the bomb maker was a screw up, the thing didn’t go off. At least is wasn’t in his/her undies.
Batocchio
McArdle would buy this.
Norbrook
For a while, my friends and family used to get me various gadgets for my birthday or Christmas. It took a while, but I managed to break them of that. While some things were useful – I really appreciated the crock pot – most were not. A “grilled sandwich maker”? As opposed to just flipping the damn thing on a standard frying pan? I ended up cleaning a lot of crap like that out when I moved – it was amazing the number of things people thought I “needed” or would be “useful.”
chowkster
Has anyone here installed Fedora 12? I tried installing it on my IBM box. Love the GUI and the simplicity of use, but I just cannot get it to connect to internet. Well, actually, I can ping to http://www.google.com or any other website quite successfully from the terminal, but when I try to browse using Firefox, I can only connect to fedoraproject.com. Has anyone had this experience? I am frustrated because I may have to go back to Vista.
Kirk Spencer
@Norbrook: Toaster, Crock Pot, electric skillet. Then hint around for a stand mixer (kitchenaid type of thing). I use the heck out of my small Foreman grill as well — great for things like cuban and panini sandwiches, and since I’ve got it I’ll go ahead and use it for a lot of things I could ‘just flip’.
But yeah, there are a lot of worthless gadgets out there.
John S.
In my experience, Cricut products are garbage. My friend who works at Michael’s announced last week, “wait until you see the new piece of shit we got”. Anyone that thinks they are going to rival anything done professionally on a grand scale is likely to be disappointed. Cricut makes sure to riddle their products with enough latent cost and performance issues to make sure this thing will never be more than an expensive toy.
PurpleGirl
It’s the perfect thing to put on your marble countertop in the Mcmansion’s family-sized kitchen.
MikeJ
@chowkster: DNS issue? Can you connect to anything with a numeric ip?
aimai
I think this cake decorating thing goes along with other forms of conspicuous consumption that upper class women are encouraged to engage in, and that lower class women sometimes get sucked into thinking it can be an extra source of income.
I’m thinking about all these kinds of frivolous things that mark the upper class mommy off from the working mom: the “gift wrapping center” (I actually know someone who had one), the “cake decorating stuff” the scrapbooking. At the fringes you will find lower class women sometimes taking this stuff up, paying for classes and books, because they think they can make some money selling their expertise to other women in their social circle a la tupperware party. Cake decorating is definitely one of those things. My daughter’s brazilian babysitter got into it and took several classes and sold cakes to her aquaintances for a while. I don’t think it was ever really viable as an economic move on her part, but those brazilian baby party dollars were otherwise going to costco (the cakes are huge) so keeping the money in the community was a nice feature. And the emphasis on cake decorating was a natural extension of the massive amount of female labor that went into the making of all the other foods and decorations at those parties.
aimai
hp
Little One
So many times you have seen your mama cry
Over all that has happened in her crumbling mess of a life
And have tried to comfort me, to shake me out of it
With meows and rubs against my arm and head
As I kneel over the bed, sobbing, sobbing
Lumps are already forming again on your tail
Where the hair has not even grown out yet
From the time they cut it out of you
Oh my little one, what shall I do about you?
For you?
What shall I do when the final moment comes
How will I even stand?
With no one by my side to hold me up
How will I even see, through the tears?
And what shall I do about all my babies?
That I can no longer care for
Why do I have to make these choices?
Again
Someone take them from me
Someone, make me feel nothing
In the months to come
RedKitten
A friend of mine is very into cake decorating. She does a beautiful job — better than many professional bakeries I’ve seen. I could see her lusting after this machine. And believe me — she is the polar opposite of wealthy.
Bill E Pilgrim
Well, on the plus side you could print out pictures of Tunch to use as cake decorations.
On the minus side, I’m not sure there’s enough frosting in the entire world for a cake that size.
David
“Best Wishes Suzanne
Under Neat That
We Will Miss You”
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
Kobie
@Norbrook: WHOA. Do not disparage the wonder that is the sandwich-maker. Many times some cold spaghetti and sauce has gone betwixt two slices of bread and into that contraption and come out a masterpiece.
Ash Can
@David: That’s one of the greatest blogs of all time.
dr. bloor
If the cake stenciler prevents just one home hobbyist from putting rhinestones on his/her jeans and spangles around the words “Superbitch!” or “Mommy’s little angel” on their t-shirts, I regard this as a big win for society.
Jennifer
Proof that you don’t need stencils to make a really awesome cake.
Cat Lady
@Jennifer:
Putting the pr0n in food pr0n. I wouldn’t mind having that rammed down my throat. :-D
LuciaMia
What exactly does it stencil? Do you crank a sheet of fondant through that thing?
Mike in NC
Oddly enough, we were at a party last night and a neighbor mentioned that she wanted me to help her sell one of these thingees on eBay. Had no idea what it was. Good grief.
Nemo_N
Is New York part of Real America™ again?
New Yorker
So has the wingnut media started screaming in hysterics over the poorly done Rube Goldberg bomb in Times Square last night? Has Obama been blamed yet? Is it time to waterboard someone yet? Just let me know, as it’s very quiet here in NYC.
gbear
@David: Great, I just spent over half an hour looking at cakes on a morning that I wanted to get stuff done. Thanks a lot.
What an addicting site.
Folderol and Ephemera
@New Yorker:
. . . Too quiet.
hamletta
Sunny? Sunny?! Really??
I’m building an ark here. Middle Tennessee is under several feet of water. A building floated down I-24 yesterday.
My truck’s in the shop, so my friend from choir came and got me, and we forded various streams to get downtown, only to find the church locked up. We didn’t get a robocall or nothin’!
TooManyJens
A friend’s mom decorates cakes from her home for some extra income, which I don’t think is too unusual. I could see this machine being a reasonable investment for someone like that.
Brutus et tu
That’s more than a week on minimum wage, especially after net take home pay, that’s damn near 2 weeks.
RedKitten
I love Cake Wrecks — and always am blown away by the incredible talent displayed when they do Sunday Sweets.
fucen tarmal
@hamletta:
this probably will sound more prickish than i mean it to, but with the right arrangement it sounds like something you could sell in nashville..
grumpy realist
Niche machine for niche market, unless it’s professional quality (i.e. will last forever) and you happen to have a cake decorating business.
(I still think that when it comes to Stuff To Do With Fondant, nobody, but nobody out-decorates the Brits. )
OT: for anyone looking to outfit his kitchen with as little as possible but still being able to cook a lot, go for the following:
1) a good set of Japanese knives (must include one heavy-duty knife that can whack through chicken bones/frozen meat.)
2) standard four-sided grater.
3) measuring cup (big Pyrex one)
4) wooden cutting board
5) small pot with lid, big deep frying pan with lid.
Everything else you can improvise. I’ve used antique ABP cut glass bowls as mixing bowls, jugs of maple syrup as garlic crushers…
sukabi
@Jennifer: So THAT’s what it means to get fraggled! LOL!
asiangrrlMN
I could buy ten cakes for that price, which is more than I’ve bought in the last ten years. So, no go for me.
asiangrrlMN
@RedKitten: Thank you for explaining that to me. I thought the cakes on the front page looked really nice!
Jamey
This machine won’t make America fat, Anne.
Oy! So what are you saying, that there is no obesity epidemic, that this machine makes lazy people sit on the sofa and stuff their maws, or something else?
Geez, it’s a kitchen tool. Try not to have kittens over it!
sukabi
this cake decorating gadget is just another case of “with this machine, you too can be an expert”… which doesn’t make it true… you still need to be able to cook a bit, and have some artistic sense because even the perfectly cut out stencils won’t make your cake from a box taste any better… and being able to put cutouts on a cake certainly doesn’t make you an expert cake decorator….
when they make a machine that can make gum paste orchids, babies breath and apple blossoms then I’ll be impressed… and the professional cake bakers will have something to worry about…
maus
@MTiffany:
I’m cool with sous vide, but how the fuck do they fit it into the hour or so preptime? That’s really bending the rules or risking the judges’ health.
MTiffany
@maus: Don’t get me wrong, sous vide is a fantastic technique (if you remember to give red meats a quick sear before presentation), I just won’t watch Top Chef anymore because it seems that every episode one of the contestants goes for sous vide or ceviche.
@RedKitten: Since your friend already does a good job by hand, she won’t need this piece of crap machine.
@Geoduck: At least no one died this time. The Teabagger Taliban will eventually get it right, I’m sure.
robertdsc
Paging Laura W, we have an entrant for comment of the year.
Wile E. Quixote
@chowkster:
If you want to get into Linux then I recommend Ubuntu or Kubuntu (Which is Ubuntu with the KDE desktop manager). Canonical has done a lot of work on Ubuntu to make it friendly and easy to use and it is by far the best Linux variant to use if you want to use the KVM virtualization technology.
Fedora and CentOS are both dependent upon RedHat. And RedHat isn’t terribly interested in individual users, they made a decision to become the Linux provider for big companies and to move away from providing the kinds of things that individual users want, such as a decent desktop.