South Korean Shell Game

Wreckporter Carrie was recently in South Korea with the military, and though the commissary there served American-style cakes, she was afraid the language barrier might pose a problem. So when the time came to order her son's birthday cake, Carrie left nothing to chance. First she ordered an edible image to place on the cake herself - thereby eliminating the possibility of misspellings or botched artwork - and then she called up the bakery to ask for a plain sheet cake.

"I told her I had an edible image I was going to place on the cake," Carrie writes, "so I just wanted a yellow and blue border, with white frosting on the top of the cake. [The baker] asked what kind of border pattern I would like, and I said scalloped was fine, but anything would do."

Fool-proof, right?

Oh, come on, it's not like you're reading Cake Successes right now.

Yes, my friends, those two swirly-haired Jacks from Nightmare Before Christmas are, in fact, the baker's interpretation of a "scalloped border."

As in scallops.

And this just might be my new favorite misunderstanding EVER.

To Carrie's credit, she really made the best of things; she told her son the scallops were "the wheels left by the bad guy after Bumblebee took care of him." Ha!

A birthday story for the ages, and all it cost her was two clams.