Even perfection gets boring

Scroll through most of food Instagram and you will find meticulously plated dishes, awe-inspiring intricate cakes, and tables overflowing with stunning tableware, each item placed just so to present the perfect vibe. As you swipe from one perfect image to the next, you might start to feel inadequate at your own culinary inadequacies or worse yet, become bored with it all. When everything is gorgeous, it all tends to blend together. Enter @_hoe_cakes_. The creation of artist and designer Sara Sarmiento, this Instagram account explores the messy, lumpy, slouched, and otherwise ugly in home baking.

Sarmiento found that when she started following baking accounts on Instagram after she lost her job, “the only ones that really caught my eye were the disastrous, really messy ones.”  She created Hoe Cakes to be able to share the ones she found most attractive. They might not be beautiful to anyone else, but Sarmiento celebrates cakes that are “messy in a visceral kind of way.” 

Another person taking an unorthodox approach to cakes is ceramic-artist-turned-hobbyist-baker Alli Gelles. She shares over-the-top images of cakes dripping with fruit, globs of frosting, sprinkles of glitter, and sprigs of herbs or flower on her account @cakes4sport. “I would definitely say fairly chaotic,” she says in describing her cakes. As an artist, Gelles enjoys the transient delivery medium that baking provides, saying “even if you don’t think this is a pretty cake, you’re at least going to eat it. You’re going to enjoy it—and who doesn’t like cake?”