A mum has vowed she will never eat her favourite birthday cake again after she cut into the sweet treat she has enjoyed for the last seven years to find it was green to the core with mould.
Jamie Hogan, 36, from Yanderra, New South Wales, was left gagging at the sight of the shop-bought dusty pink rose cake, when she cut into it on Sunday 23 February to discover the entire sponge was rotten.
The mum-of-one refrigerated the £24.30 ($47.90 AUD/$31.50 USD) cake immediately after her husband, Mark, 37, an electrician, brought it home on Friday night knowing it had been her favourite kind for nearly a decade.
But the family were horrified when they realised the mouldy cake, which they had already picked at and eaten some icing from, appeared to have gone off long before they tucked in for a proper slice with their 11-month old daughter, Piper.
A spokesman for chain Michel's Patisserie, based in nearby Picton, NSW, said the mould was a 'one-off isolated occurrence'.
Stay-at-home mum Jamie said: "I pulled the knife out and I immediately thought that doesn't look right. I thought maybe it was the cream or something, then I noticed it was green and I thought maybe they have used food colouring by accident.
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"But my husband took one look at it and said 'that's mould', you could see where the sponge used to have a normal vanilla colour on the edges. I nearly threw up, I had to put it all back in the box because I couldn't even look at it.
"I've been worrying about the fact that Piper had some of the icing, I don't even want to think about what could have happened had she eaten some of the actual cake. My stomach has been turning constantly ever since, I've not been right.
"When you look at mould it makes you feel sick, it does things to your mind and stomach."
After her unsavoury discovery, Jamie contacted the bakery, which has stores all across Australia, where the manager offered her a refund and told her to bring the cake back to the patisserie.
Unsatisfied with the response, she decided to raise her complaint higher within the company, and was later offered a $50 AUD (£25/$32.80 USD) voucher by the customer services manager who apologised for the bad experience.
But for Jamie the cake did more than leave a bad taste in her mouth, with the mum questioning what could have happened if her daughter or another child got hold of the grotesque gateau.
She said: "I have been going to them for 19 years and I have never had a problem with any of their cakes until now. The voucher is no good to me because there's no way in hell I'll be going back there again.
"It's not really about the money it's the fact that it could have been a vulnerable person who bought it and if they hadn't noticed that it was off, how seriously ill could they have been.
"If a child got hold of a cake like that, they'd have their hands in there and they would be eating it before you'd even have time to realise."
A spokesman for Michel's Patisserie said: "After an internal review of the incident we can confirm that the picture shared was a one-off isolated occurrence.
"This cake was delivered by the supplier to the store less than 24 hours before it was sold.
"It was already fully decorated meaning the store owner was unable to see the inside of the cake before it was sold.
"Despite this cake being a popular product with hundreds sold every day, there have been no other incidents identified in the network.
"Our number one priority remains customer safety and quality and we are working with this supplier to ensure that this does not happen again."
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