'I baked the wrong color cake at a gender reveal and chaos ensued. AITA?' UPDATED 2X
"I baked the wrong color cake at a gender reveal and chaos ensued. AITA?"
I (F28) am currently eight months pregant with mine and my husband's (M32) first child, and while we are over the moon, neither of us were ever super invested in the idea of throwing a gender reveal party. My sister (F26) hosted a baby shower for me a couple of months ago, and I felt that that was more than enough.
Recently, my best friend ("Amy" F30) announced that she was four months pregnant and she wanted the two of us to have a joint gender reveal since we could not do a joint baby shower. While I never planned on throwing a gender reveal, this was really important to Amy and she really wanted us to share the experience.
My husband I had already told some people that we were expecting a little boy, but Amy wanted us to have the full experience, meaning that my husband and I would "find out" the gender in the same way as Amy and her husband (M31) would find out the gender of their littlie.
Utlimately, we decided that this would work best if each couple cut into individual coloured cakes. As I bake as a hobby, we decided that we could save some money and I could bake and decorate the cakes.
We decided that my and my husband's cake would be a lemon cake dyed blue on the inside, but decorated with white icing and pink/blue sprinkles. Amy asked that her cake is decorated in the same way, but gave me creative control on flavours.
At this point, I found out from Amy's doctor that she and her husband were expecting a little girl so I thought it would be a nice idea to do a red velvet cake (chocolate being her favourite flavour).
I baked the cakes in the same style as Christina Tosi's famous birthday cake, and I was pretty thrilled with the outcome. Unfortunately, all did not go to plan. Amy/her husband and I/my husband cut our respective cakes at the same time, but Amy immediately burst into tears once she saw the inside of her cake.
Unfortunately, the coloring that I had used was not very, very vibrant and the red velvet cake was red but kind of brownish too. You could definitely tell that it was red, but I Amy was unhappy with the "muddy" color.
Her husband immediately accused me of racism considering that he is a POC while Amy, my husband, and I are all white. He said that I choose a "muddy brown" colour to indicate that his daughter would be mixed. He was like wow you ruined the party this is psychotic!
Offending her husband with my cake was absolutely NOT my intention. Amy and her husband left the gender reveal very soon afterwards and have refused to speak to me.
Amy's mom (F56) has said that I should be ashamed of ruining such a special moment that Amy had gone out of her way to share with me, and I have been messaged by some mutual friends telling me that Amy is worried she will miscarry from the stress. AITA for ruining the gender reveal? Was I biased unintentionally?
Before we give you OP's updates, let's take a look at some of the top responses:
comma7 writes:
I think that gender reveal parties are more about social media likes and accidentally setting a forest on fire or in the worst case scenario...killing grandma with a pipe bomb (Yes, they both happened) than sharing news that isn't really "big picture" important. Which makes them ridiculously stupid in my opinion.
I am having a difficult time wrapping my head around your color choice for Amy's cake. The cake is either pink or blue.
(I also think that "gender colors" are pretty dumb as well) I assume that the blue in your cake was a shade that left no confusion to the blue color nor the gender of your child.
Why did you think that DARK RED would indicate that Amy was having a girl? You saw that the cake was DARK RED and nowhere near pink before you frosted it. Your cake was blue. Amy's cake was not pink. Pink or blue.
While I think that Amy is a bit of a tool for wanting the party I can understand her disappointment. As a POC, I can also understand Amy's husband's thought's and reaction to a cake that was dark red/brown and not...pink or blue.
I'm not accusing you of intentional or unintentional racism. Your post seems sincere. I believe that you weren't trying to ruin anybodies experience, but there are a few people who are hurt, confused and offended because of what happened. Hopefully, everyone involved can talk about their feelings and be heard. 50/50.
onefra7 writes:
NTA- So you agree to do something you don't want to, are willing to pretend you don't already know the gender AND make the cakes; but you can't make an explainable mistake?
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it was the public nature and spur of the moment stress that made such a strong reaction. Talk again in a couple days and hopefully you guys can have a productive conversation and she will see your side.
otie1983 writes:
We’d done a mixed baby shower/“gender” reveal when I was pregnant with out daughter… but that was mostly because my husband and I had already started referring to our daughter by her name around each other and figured why not add a baked good to the baby shower.
It also meant that we were able to have a reason to not tell anyone until the baby shower, so any gifts would be gender neutral (because OMFG… everything after that point was dresses and pink unless my husband and I bought it… we wanted her to figure out her own favourites and styles, and at eight, she loves dresses but her favourite colours are currently yellow, purple, and Elsa blue).
And honestly, the only reason why I wanted to know what we were having was because I had been referring to her as “she” from the moment I got the positive, and dang it, I just wanted to know if that gut sense I got was right (fun aside… I’d actually had a dream when I was about three months along, where I saw my daughter as a six or seven year old…
I wrote down a description of her in the dream, and that ended up being 100% accurate, right down to knowing she’d have an outtie belly button). If we get lucky enough to have a second, I don’t see us bothering finding out until birth.
The folks who go absolutely insane planning huge parties JUST for that… I don’t get. Why the need for explosions to celebrate a baby? Like, the two don’t exactly go hand in hand, unless you’re talking poop explosions…
neenits writes:
NTA, but very, very foolish. Why on earth did you think red velvet would read as pink? Seriously? You should have done chocolate layers, with one of some fruit, like maybe cherry, with pink coloring. That would have satisfied everything, and looked great.
scrabblement8 writes:
ESH. Gender reveal parties are awful, and she shouldn't have pressured you into participating in hers. But you saw the cake when it came out of the oven, and you knew it wasn't pink or even bright red.
Pink interior icing or a hidden pink sprinkle center might have saved this situation. Instead, you gave her a cake that wasn't pink at all, when "be pink on the inside" was really the cake's one job.
OP's first update:
I had chosen red velvet because chocolate is Amy's favourite flavour, and I thought it would be close enough to pink that no one would mind. When discussing flavours, she told me that she did not want a "boring vanilla" cake, which is also why we did lemon for mine.
Thank you for taking the time to leave such a detailed comment, I really appreciate your perspective. I feel terrible that everything ended the way that it did, I genuinely thought that Amy would appreciate a chocolate flavoured cake, which is obviously quite difficult to make a soft pink colour. I truly believed that red would be close enough to pink that it would not matter all that much.
I agree with all the points that you make about gender reveals, which is why I was not too interested in hosting one myself. It was only when Amy was so excited that I thought it would be a nice thing to do for her, I wanted her pregnancy experience to be everything she wanted it to be. It kills me that I might have ruined that for her.
I realise that I might have been a bit of an idiot when I chose the cake, but I never meant to be racially insensitive towards anyone. I have messaged and called Amy a few times, but I haven't heard anything back from her. I will update Reddit if/when I do.
babyjoe writes:
I'm mixed myself, and I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around the friend and her husband's response. The friend - okay, she's pregnant, emotions can get out of control, I get it - but wtf, Greg? His reasoning is such a stretch of the imagination, it's incomprehensible.
Like, I understand he might come from a place where people get hung up on his racial background, as I come from a place like that too, but this is just nuts. It was obviously an accident in the food coloring, and while OOP should have just gone with pink anyway...
her cake choice came from a heartfelt place. It's one of those things that you go, "Oh no!" and laugh about because 1) it wasn't on purpose, and 2) the cake is still good, NBD. Idk, maybe I'm being blasé, but I just do not get the fuss.
madios7 writes:
How can people think she's the super racist one? To me she seemed to do what Amy concluded, make her a nice cake which she probably would have liked flavor wise, in her spare time, I also dislike the pink blue gender association.
I get why but I can still dislike it. Anyway that people called her a racist is very strange to me, maybe inconsiderate at worst but considering how good decisions the avarage person makes there is many much worse things people do daily.
OP's final update:
I didn't get much traction on my original post, but I did receive quite a few hateful messages saying that I was a racist AH whose baby did not deserve to survive. When I posted on Reddit about the colour of a gender reveal cake, I certainly did not expect that.
That being said, I did receive a few comments on the post telling me that I should have gone with a traditional pink colour and that Amy deserved an apology, which was fair enough.
I did not want a gender reveal myself, but I had wanted to support Amy in any way I could, and I realise that I screwed up. I genuinely believed that using red instead of pink would not be a problem, but I should have asked the question rather than making a unilateral decision.
I chatted to my husband this evening when he got home and we decided that I would have a discussion with Amy and offer throwing her a new gender reveal party (with a cake from a bakery) if that is what she would like.
At the end of the day, it was never my intention to ruin this occassion for her. I had seen that she had tried to give me a call this afternoon but I had missed it, which told me that she was open to a chat.
Amy and her husband do not live very far away, so I invited them both for a drink this evening. Amy very graciously accepted but she said that "Greg" would not be joining her.
When she came around, my husband left us to it, and I wholeheartedly apologised for ruining the event for her and offered to organise another reveal, if that is what she would like.
Amy surprised me by saying that she was the one who owed me an apology, and that she should not have run out of the party like that. She said that she absolutely loved the red velvet idea, seeing as she loves chocolate cake.
She said that she burst into tears in the moment because she was unhappy that the colour was a bit brown and a bit red, but that she realises now that she should have been grateful for, rather than critical of, my baking skills. At the end of the day, I am a hobby baker and I made the cakes in my spare time. She said that she should have been appreciative of my time and effort.
Amy also told me that she felt Greg's comments about racism were out of line considering that I have always been a good friend to both of them, and she said she felt it was an excuse for him to be upset.
She told me that Greg has always found reasons to be upset/angry at her friends and family, and she told me that they have been in marriage counselling because she feels that he is trying to isolate her from her social circle.
Apparently the baby was an accident and Greg had pressured her to keep it, which she also told me probably contributed to the outburst at the gender reveal. She said that she has been under a lot of stress and unfortunately channelled it towards the cake colour (and by extension, me).
As for Amy's mom, Amy told me that she did not realise her mom had blamed me for ruining the event and said that she would speak to her.
Amy does think that the flying monkeys warning me of a miscarriage were probably from Greg, probably just to lay it on extra thick. As of right now, she said that she does not know what she will do, but I told her that I will be there for her regardless of what happens.
At the end of the day, both Amy and I had a few lessons to learn in this. I know that I will never make another gender reveal cake again, and I should not unilaterally make decisions on my friends' behalves. Even if it is coming from a good place, it does not mean that other people will always appreciate being blindsided.
All in all, kind of a sombre ending to a gender reveal story but communication saved my friendship and I appreciate the kind comments on Reddit for opening my eyes that I had kind of been an AH. Lesson learnt for everyone: If the baby is a girl, bake a PINK cake.