Woman Refuses To Eat Nephew’s “Gross” Smash Cake — Then Gets An Angry Call From Her Sister

Having a smash cake at a one-year-old’s birthday party has become somewhat of a tradition. After family and friends sing “Happy Birthday” to celebrate a little one’s first trip around the sun, a small cake is presented to the toddler for them to completely demolish.

Typically after the child is smothered in cake and frosting, the remains of the dessert are thrown away — and often another treat is brought out for the civilized guests to consume. However, that wasn’t the case for one specific party that’s now going viral on Reddit.

A woman is asking Reddit’s popular “Am I The A**hole?” thread if she’s in the wrong for refusing to take a serving of her nephew’s post-smash cake and calling it “gross.”

“Yesterday was my nephew's 1st birthday, and my sister and BIL had a little get together at their house. When it was time for cake, they brought out my nephew's ‘smash cake’ —exactly what it sounds, a cake for the baby to smash up and get icing all over themselves for cute pictures or whatever,” she begins.

She then explains that after her nephew went to town on the cake “with his bare hands” as well as diving into it mouth first, her sister started serving the remains of the cake to party guests.

Hm. OK.

“My sister started scooping up the mangled remains and distributing servings to everyone (just a handful of family members.) And everyone else was actually eating it!” she remarked.

“I declined because...seriously? I didn't want to eat something that has had a baby's grubby hands and body all over it, and I was surprised that anyone else did.”

After her sister kept insisting that she take a piece of the cake, the OP told her that it was “gross” to offer up used smash cake to others.

“Now...I probably wouldn't have used the word gross if I wasn't on the spot, but I was not at all prepared to have to politely decline to eat baby spit,” she wrote.

The next day, her sister called to tell her how much her remarks hurt her. She continued, “She thought I was being extremely judgmental, that it wasn't a big deal, we're all family, don't participate if I really don't want to but don't call her gross, etc.”

The subreddit — which now has over 14k upvotes — took off with several thousand users backing up this OP’s feelings, remarking that typically party hosts provide another cake (free of baby spit and germs, if you can imagine) for adults to eat.

One user wrote, “[Not the a**hole] Smash cakes are supposed to be only for smashing and for the baby to eat. There is usually a second, non-smashed cake for adults to eat, or the adults are just adults about it and don't eat any cake. I've never heard of someone trying to serve a smashed cake to adults.”

“100% NTA,” another user echoed. “A smash cake is for the child. There should have been a regular cake for consumption by the partygoers. It’s ridiculous to think people, even if they are family, want to eat something another person has mangled. Also, kids hands are gross. Babies teeth and have their hands in their mouths all the time. I won’t even eat little kids bday cakes where they just blow out candles. They spit all over them when they blow out the candles. It is gross.”

“Why do people think they can force someone to compromise their health to be ‘polite’? It is gross. It's gross and unsanitary,” another commented.

“You’d think we didn’t just live through a pandemic. 😬,” another said.

There were some users, however, who thought that the OP could have used a better choice of words when speaking to her sister, which the OP recognized.

“I can see how ‘that's gross’ can be interpreted as ‘you're gross for doing it.’ And maybe I shouldn't have said anything at all, just taken the plate and not eaten anything,” she wrote in a follow-up post.

Should the OP have maybe just kept her feelings to herself? Sure. However, she was pressed on the issue with her sister almost insisting that she chow down on a crumbled piece of cake that a one year old’s (probably) germ infested hands had been all over, so maybe calling the whole thing “gross” wasn’t that out of line.

Read the entire Reddit thread here.