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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To hate this smashcake craze?

588 replies

skerrywind · 09/04/2017 10:35

A close member of our family has just spent £100 on a smashcake for her 1st baby's birthday.
I find it quite disgusting to waste food like this. It surprises me that I have quite a gutteral reaction to this. I also find it disgusting to see people in baths of beans etc.

Anyone else feel like this or am I just a killjoy?

OP posts:
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7
Stillwishihadabs · 09/04/2017 17:22

Also it's not just the ingrediants, I teach my dcs that to mess about or waste food is disrespectfull to the person who cooked it (some of those cakes look really labour intensive)

ThreeLeggedHaggis · 09/04/2017 17:23

It's incredibly short sighted, and actually very ignorant, to think less of people just because they like different styles of photography to yourself!

Oh yes, the problem is definitely the style of photography and not the smashing of the cake that people have been talking about for nine pages.

Riversleep · 09/04/2017 17:27

Why does a cake that is soon to be rendered inedible cost £60? If you really wanted to do this, why can't you buy a £10 chocolate fudge cake from Asda? Why is it a special cake?

limitedperiodonly · 09/04/2017 17:35

Why wouldn't all a wedding cake be eaten? A traditional fruit cake lasts a long time. Some people keep the top tier to be used at the Christening of their first child.

I love rich fruit cake with royal icing but lots of people don't.

I expect a lot of my wedding cake went uneaten by the guests but I wanted it because it was traditional and my mum made it.

We kept the top tier for the Christening which never came. After 15 years we threw it out. It was Miss Havisham in cake form.

purpleporpoise · 09/04/2017 17:37

I bought a £5 chocolate cake for DS 1st birthday. I stripped him down to his nappy, and gave him a small piece. Yes I took photos, and put one on fb, but I wouldn't dream of spending loads of money.
My photographer friend does cake smash photo shoots, she supplies a studio and photos, you bring the child and cake

MummyMuppet2x2 · 09/04/2017 17:39

Horrid.

OhSoggyBiscuit · 09/04/2017 17:48

The sanctimonious hyperbole on this thread is making me laugh.

fliptopbin · 09/04/2017 17:52

My DH does a bit of photography on the side and was just asked about doing a cake smash shoot. He had never heard about it (neither had I ), until I found this thread. He was quite bemused by the whole thing, but after reading this he has realised that he was about to quote the client well below the going rate. However, this is Yorkshire, so I doubt the client is going to spend as much as some of the families mentioned here. Going by what I have read, I may be surprised.
My ds (10), is finding it all hilarious, and has now asked if we can do a shoot of him blowing up a cake with a firework! ( Somebody has been watching Mythbusters!)

Beebeeeight · 09/04/2017 17:59

Please say this is a late April fools?

FrancisCrawford · 09/04/2017 18:24

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

TiredCluelessMummy · 09/04/2017 18:34

It's incredibly short sighted, and actually very ignorant, to think less of people just because they like different styles of photography to yourself!

It seems you may have missed the point of the thread. It has very little to do with styles of photography.

OvariesForgotHerPassword · 09/04/2017 18:35

I just think they're a bit naff.

Our wedding cake didn't go uneaten Grin because we didn't bother with fruit cake. DD's naming ceremony was 2 years before we got married Grin

Spice22 · 09/04/2017 18:44

I remember when East Clintwood's (?) daughter burnt a $100,000 Hermes handbag for art - her boyfriend was taking pictures and it was a real bag. People were outraged. I didn't care. How can I care about something that doesn't affect me, such as how people spend their money? If she hadn't burnt the bag, she wouldn't have given it to me or some poor starving child. The same applies here - let people spend their money how they like.

SauvignonBlanche · 09/04/2017 18:48

OMG!
I've just read about the £800 cake smash for a 1 year old. Shock
I had to pour myself a Gin. This thread needs a warning. Angry

limitedperiodonly · 09/04/2017 19:36

my DF knew incredible deprivation during the war that damaged his health irreparably. The idea of intentionally wasting good food in the name of pleasure seems very perverse.

That's interesting FrancisCrawford. My parents were born in 1918 and 1923 and he served in WWII as a soldier and on she was on the Home Front in London. Both working class.

They didn't waste things but they weren't penny pinchers either. They absolutely embraced consumerism - I think they saw it as their reward, and who was to argue with them after those dark days?

They encouraged us, their three children, to watch our money but also to enjoy it and our advantages that were denied them.

They'd grown up in a pre-welfare state era where you were a clever girl or boy but left school at 14 because you had to support your family; a time when people got sick and died for want of antibiotics.

They instilled in me that I should not be grateful for things like free education, welfare and health care. It was my right, not least because they'd fought for it.

They're not around any more but that was their experience,

originalbiglymavis · 09/04/2017 19:40

And because they remembered rationing, they would enjoy eating the cake! I know my parents would have!

Dad would have thought this beyond daftness and mum would be horrified at the mess.

limitedperiodonly · 09/04/2017 19:41

^^ I forgot to say. They really wouldn't give a shit about a toddler smashing a cake. They saw a bit worse than that

LaurieMarlow · 09/04/2017 19:43

Lots of my (very delicious) wedding cake went uneaten.

originalbiglymavis · 09/04/2017 19:47

My mum knew men who came home from Japanese pow camps, so no she would be most unimpressed at wasting food.

ProfessorBranestawm · 09/04/2017 19:47

It's just another silly fad that is only a Thing because someone somewhere arbitrarily decided that it was a Thing

I don't 'get' it TBH but totally see the argument about food waste etc

limitedperiodonly · 09/04/2017 19:50

My mum knew men who came home from Japanese pow camps, so no she would be most unimpressed at wasting food.

My next door but one neighbour was one. What's your point? originalbiglymavis

originalbiglymavis · 09/04/2017 21:23

She just couldn't see food go to waste. Many she met were starved as prisoners and her mums friend told her that he ate paper and anything he could find. And there's no need to be so snippy.

mayaknew · 09/04/2017 21:28

I'm not particularly philanthropic but I absolutely cannot stand food wastage like this! I hate that supermarkets don't fees the homeless with perfectly good food that they can't sell, and I hate this horrible trend of babies sitting in luxurious cakes when there are more and more malnourished children every year in this country.

BernieKosar · 09/04/2017 21:30

Haven't rtft, but wasn't cake punching smashing invented by Mumsnet?

user1487175389 · 09/04/2017 21:33

My dds were only the other day reminding me of the mess their brother managed to get in with a single piece of chocolate when he was one. If he'd had a whole cake, I daresay I'd still be cleaning the gunk out of his hair 2 years later.