Another new fad

This reminds me of the birthday party of DS around forty years ago. One of his friends, a girl he particularly liked, poked holes with a finger all over the cake before it had been cut or candles blown and then proceeded to burst balloons on the rose bushes in the garden. Total catastrophe wrought in a couple of moments by a six year old! I expect it shows my lack of control of the situation....

I think the photograph is pretty horrible, poor child.

There are many children in this world who don't get a birthday cake ?, it's seems a shame to have one and smash it.

There are parents relying on food banks to feed their children and now witness this abuse of food and wonder the mentality of those who find this amusing and what does it teach the children who do this.

I immediately thought of children in war zones and very poor families who would so love even a small slice of a cake.

Shaking my head in disbelief at what goes on these days.

I've not heard about that at all, what a waste of food and it gives the wrong message to children about food.

Not much shocks me these days, but this does. I think it's disgusting in every way. Parents who organise this should be ashamed.

I hate to see teenagers trashing their school shirts on the last day of term. They write messages on them. Such a waste of good clothing.

Jalima I laughed at your post, but I won't be eating it again if it involves candle blowing!

MissAdventure you can't leave it at that.
Thread please!

another idea and associated stuff to sell with it .capitalism at the end of its shelf life!

Can you imagine , a skilled cake decorator spending hours making and decorating something gorgeous , for young children to hack it to bits and smash .How demoralizing for the maker.
I wonder why we have so many young people who don't respect things of beauty

I have a friend who makes beautiful cakes that are the cake version of a pinata - made to be broken but not for the child to 'face plant' in! Looks horrible and encourages bad behaviour surely?

Waste of food and waste of money. I don't like it all, like a lot of other things these day.

That practice is absolutely disgusting what on earth is wrong with people doing such idiotic things ike this , I have seen people at weddings put their partners face into a cake , I tell you if my husband did that , the marriage would not go on at all I think it is call disrespectful

I have,nt heard of this at all, what a waste of food and money, hope it does,nt really catch on. On a similar sort of theme though, on those Gypsy wedding programmes, at the reception it appears to be the tradition to pelt each other with pieces of wedding cake once the cake has been cut.
Those cakes they have are quite large and extravagant and it appears to be traditional for them to do it. Just why would you do this.?

This is appalling, and such a waste. The nearest we ever got to something like this for my daughter's birthday parties, was the 'flour mountain' game - a bowl of flour upturned on a plate, sweet on top, each child takes turns to cut slices of the flour away without disturbing the sweet. The one who lets the sweet fall gets the sweet by their teeth but inevitably ends up with a face covered in flour. All it cost was half a bag of flour!

As someone who ran a celebration cake business from home & taught Sugarcraft for many years I am obviously horrified at this. I've never heard of it before.
It can take many hours of work to create a beautiful cake & the fact it gets 'smashed' is awful.
I'm sure none of my wedding cakes every came to such a sorry end but now I wonder about the children's birthday cakes I lovingly & painstakingly iced & moulded.
It has often taken me an entire day- sometimes 2 to produce things like The Deep Dark Wood with all the Gruffulo characters or the Pirate Ship in a sea with all the pirates, parrots etc. It's bad enough to see them cut let alone smashed!
What a horrible fad!
Luckily now I only do it for my grandchildren & I see them blowing out the candles & eating the cake.

It smacks of the last days of the Roman Empire.
A total waste.

My DD arranged a Cake Smashing for my youngest GD for her first birthday. There we quite a few posed photos before the cake appeared and although it did get broken & my GD did get covered in chocolate icing, ìt wasnt cake flying everywhere. More my GD grabbing handfuls of cake with the occasional foot finding it's way into the mix. The whole session with the cake lasted around I minute before my GD found the bowl of warm soapy water. The cake, made by my daughter, suffered minimum damage and was eaten with coffee and by her siblings later that day.

My daughter and I both saw ìt as an amusing way to celebrate No 4 GCs first birthday, which it was. No photos were put on fb or other media, the photographer used some of the photos in her portfolio to help promote a new start to her career and we all ate cake and had fun.
In my opinion and with no intentionof offending anyone, bringing up food banks and starving people over a cake smash is rather like telling people not to eat cake, chocolate, party food or even eat out because so many people never get the chance. If people wish to help charities, which my DD and I do, there are several ways of doing so, while not denying our own children of fun activities.
As a side issue, No 4 GC is severely allergic to several foods, so has a higher than usual awareness of where food cokes from and it's preparation.
Having participated in a cake smash hasn't turned her into some uncaring monster. Equally, having bought and paid for the ingredients, made the cake, and eaten the remains, nothing was wasted, considering how much food is thrown away by the average household every day.

I haven't seen this tendency yet, but for years I have been offended by the food fights that are common features in Disney films for children and teenagers.

I have no idea whether American teachers and parents allow this sort of thing, but presumably they do otherwise it wouldn't feature so often in American films or series.

Playing with food was very sternly discouraged in my family, and is still not considered acceptable behaviour in Denmark.

To me encouraging children to break things, whether food or not, is wrong and allowing them to waste food is equally as bad.

For me, its less about harming the children, and just a feeling of distaste for the what seems to be falseness of the situation.
A picture of a baby tucking in to a cake and getting covered in it is cute, but this is as if more is always better.

Some folk have money to waste and no brains.

I don't know for certain why this is a feature of some Gypsy weddings, but I assume it is a fertility rite, although probably now those who practise it do not realise this.

Wedding cake - a dry biscuit like concoction, was broken over the heads of the bride and groom before they entered their home in the Roman Empire as a way of expressing the hope that the pair would be fruitful, just as we still throw rice at weddings.

In Scotland in my childhood a small slice of wedding cake was sent in a special box by post to anyone the bride or groom knew who had not been able to attend the wedding. You made a wish as you took the first bite of the cake, and unmarried women were supposed to slip the box and cake under their pillow in order to dream of their future husband, then eat the cake in the morning.

Ritually speaking that was an inclusion rite, including the newly married pair into society, by passing out slices of cake that everyone who knew them ate - another function of wedding cakes, and indeed wedding breakfasts.

My gt nieces have done this for their children - personally I think it is a silly trend but brilliant business planning on behalf of the cake makers who sell two cakes for each party instead of one!

Ah, I hadn't thought of that! 2 cakes? I'm astounded.