What is a smash cake?

What is the point of a cake smash?

It's part ritual, part photo shoot. A one-year-old meets a whole cake of their own, usually fists first, and the reaction is the picture. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 2015 that smash cakes had grown from half to 75 percent of one Chestnut Hill bakery's first-birthday orders in five years, most of them 4-inch vanilla cakes (inquirer.com/philly/living/20150325_Have_your_cake_and_photograph_it__too.html).

That bakery used buttercream rather than fondant, because it's messier and looks better in photos. Neat is the enemy here.

Where did it start? The same article calls it "anyone's guess" and credits social media for the spread. Cake at a first birthday is old news. Handing the baby a whole cake and photographing the wreckage is the newer idea.

Smash cake basics: size, frosting and timing

Two practical tips before the table: run the bath before you start, and shoot from the baby's eye level, not from above.

First birthday traditions around the world

In the US the first birthday often comes with a cake smash. Other places mark it with a forecast, a workout or a bite.

• Korea, doljabi: at the doljanchi, the first-birthday party, the baby picks from a table of objects, and the pick is read as a hint about their future. A brush, gavel or stethoscope stands for a scholar, legislator or doctor; coins and thread stand for wealth and a long life. Newer tables add a microphone, a computer mouse or a tiny soccer ball (koreaherald.com/article/2947555).
• Japan, isshō mochi: the baby carries a rice cake of about 1.8 kilograms on their back. The name is a pun: one shō of rice sounds like isshō, a lifetime. Some babies march. Most sit down.
• Mexico, la mordida: after the song, guests chant for the birthday person to bite the cake with no hands, and someone usually helps their face the rest of the way in. It's for any age, which makes it the grown-up cousin of the cake smash.

Smash cake ideas

• Match the cake to something they already love: banana cake for a banana fan, blueberries on top for a blueberry fan.
• A watermelon round, cut like a cake and topped with yogurt, for a fruit smash.
• A doughnut tower or a short stack of pancakes, if cake isn't your thing.
• One big number-one balloon, a few pastel ones and a plain wall. The cake is the star.
• Put the cake down and say nothing. The first reaction is often a suspicious stare, which is the best photo of the day.
• Give older siblings a cupcake each. Same rules, same bath.
• Try a tiny one at six months as a rehearsal: half birthday ideas.
• Skip the cleanup with a first birthday card that puts the baby in a cake smash, made from one photo.

How we made the cake-smash cards

We have three. Cake Smash is the classic: a one-year-old behind a small pastel cake, frosting on the hands and cheeks, a giant number-one balloon, an aqua and lilac backdrop. Cake Smash Royalty sits a toddler on a throne carved out of a three-tier cake, in a paper crown with their age on it. The third is for grown-ups; more on that below.

Our test toddler is Malik, 2: curly hair, chubby cheeks, a striped t-shirt and no existence whatsoever. Each idea is tried on him many times and graded: does it still look like him, is it funny, does it fit the card, is it well made. One failure kept coming back across the whole test family: the cake survived. Of 178 graded cake-smash and face-plant takes, more than 50 were flagged for a cake that was barely touched. Malik would be frosted to the wrists behind a spotless cake, as if he'd brought his own frosting from home.

The throne was the next fight. We asked for a throne carved out of cake, and some takes sat him on an ordinary chair behind a cake, which is just a toddler at a table. Then a rule came from the card's own notes: frosting on the face can hide the face, so it stays on the tip of the nose and the fists. The prompt also says to keep the child the same age as in the photo.

The extra pictures in a card are riffs on it: trick candles that won't go out, or a cake as big as a car with one tiny fork. Asked for that one, a take gave Malik a normal cake and, parked behind it, a car. In the video a blob of frosting flips up and lands on his crown. Nobody talks; it's party sounds only.

The grown-up cake smash

Adults wanted in. Know Your Meme traces the grown-up cake smash to a photographer's gallery in September 2013, and it took off as the #adultcakesmash hashtag in 2015 (knowyourmeme.com/memes/adult-cake-smashing).

Our Grown-Up Cake Smash card copies the baby shoot down to the props: blush-pink tulle, a tiny gold party hat, a pastel balloon garland, a pink cake on a low white stand, the soft light of a newborn photographer's studio. In the video they smile sweetly at the camera, then, with total seriousness, plunge both hands in and take a bite off the top like a toddler.

Denise, 58, from our test family, wore the tulle. One rule on this card doesn't bend: it's for adults only. It parodies a baby shoot, so it's never offered for a kid's photo; kids have their own cake cards. For a sister or a best friend who still says they're 29, pair it with a line from our birthday memes for her.