Enough of this dessert disinformation. Admit it, cake sucks

Whether you know it as the French “tarte”, the German “torte”, or the Dutch “taart”, the cake has forever been a joyful way for families to connect, as well as a wafer-thin excuse for CWA ladies to duel. But it’s time we admit that the cake is nothing but stale bread in a silly frock. Despite what the powers at The Great British Bake Off will have you believe, cakes are overrated.

Don’t get me wrong, I have the biggest sweet tooth of anyone, but I’ve been burnt. When I was a child, something terrible happened that changed me forever: I discovered my favourite cake, the McDonald’s ice cream cake circa 1999, wasn’t a cake at all. It was, in fact, ice cream, cloaked in the shape of a cake. I was scandalised. Beyond being an important lesson in how things we love can deceive us, this sneaky dessert proved it will do anything – even gaslight a Piscean country kid on her eighth birthday – to stay relevant.

When a dessert needs to work as hard as cake does to get attention, it’s not worth the sugar spike.Credit: Getty Images

The cake has been around for over 2000 years, and doesn’t it just taste like it! Cake hasn’t meaningfully innovated since Marie Antoinette’s time, each layer propped up with ingredients stolen from other great desserts. Cake just gets to sit back, and take all the credit.

Cake is truly miraculous; it manages to simultaneously taste dry and soggy, while adorned with elaborate Instagrammable embellishments that we all eat around. Don’t get me started on icing, that sickly saccharine glace. Glace is not good! It has a sand-in-your-mouth quality, a gagging thick frosting shell that becomes rock-hard when left to sit out for more than 30 seconds.

Have you noticed that there’s always more cake in the room than appetite for it? I’ve attended enough family birthdays to know that cake is less about celebration and more about psychological warfare. Why should I have to choose how big or small my slice should be in front of a crowd? If I say “chonky sized”, I’m judged for being calorific; if I say “oh, just a slither”, I’m judged (quite rightly) for my dumb pronunciation.

Cake at its most annoying: the only dessert that can be used as a weapon.Credit: Syndication International

In a world where chocolate exists, cake has miraculously insinuated itself into our lives without merit. There is something to respect in the hustle. After all, the global cake market size was estimated at USD$65.68 billion in 2023. What the sponge lacks in deliciousness, it totes in magnificent branding power.

In order to survive among the better treats (like literally anything else), the cake has aligned itself with our most sacred events: weddings, Christmases, and the notorious birthday party. Like Madonna with Catholicism and Nike with its namesake deity, cake has managed to convince us of its importance through divine associations. So no matter how much I think cake would be better suited in the bin, a party just doesn’t feel right without one.

Lighting yourself on fire and demanding people sing in a circle? Show me another food that needs pyrotechnics and a musical number.

The cake is not only subpar tastewise, it’s also attached to absurd cultlike traditions such as “kiss the nearest boy or girl.” It’s never as whimsical as you’d think: if your knife pulls out dirty, it means your cake is raw, and if your knife is clean, it means you don’t get to kiss your blood relative in front of everyone. A cruel lose-lose.

It’s dire, but cakes aren’t stupid. Fully cognisant of their limitations, when hitching themselves to annual inevitabilities wasn’t enough to convince us to enjoy a slice, they gave themselves an explosive edge. Enter: the candle.

We all make embarrassing choices out of desperation, but lighting yourself on fire and demanding people sing your song in a circle? Show me another food that needs pyrotechnics and a musical number. The ancient Greeks even started a thing where we put gold and jewellery inside cakes to incentivise consumption – which is, quite frankly, a huge red flag. Hiding valuables inside yourself and making people eat their way to it? It begs the question: are cakes psychos?

Cakes are the pick-me of food and one of the biggest tryhards I’ve ever come across. I would know – I’m in $60,000 of HECS debt from full-time drama school. Speaking of unstable behaviour, you know there’s trouble at Big Cake HQ when customers aren’t eating your food product but instead repurposing it as a makeshift weapon. That’s what happened in the mid-20th century, and like a newly instated dictator, the cake didn’t shy away from its violent reputation, instead making it all part of the “fun”.

Throwing cake in someone’s face, or getting “pied”, became a way to humiliate politicians, as well as contestants on Love Island. Smashing your newlywed’s perfectly made-up face into frosting is still occurring at weddings and remains one of the cringiest acts straight people do, alongside pub trivia and knowing all the words to Daryl Braithwaite’s Horses.

All of this to say, cake is not a talented baked good. I’ve never been one to bow down and kiss the ring of Sara Lee. In its thirsty attempt to be extraordinary, using fortune and fire and even our own mortality against us, it has only proven there’s nothing extraordinary about it. People just want authenticity. I reckon the more cake stops trying to be the star, the literal centre of attention at parties and in depressing office kitchenettes, the better chance it has of being genuinely chosen from behind a glass counter.

We gather in circles. We sing. We watch someone blow their respiratory droplets all over our dessert. And we call this fun. All I’m saying is, chocolate would never have to pull this shit.

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