How can I improve this photo

First of all, better lighting would have made all the difference with this photo.  I would invest in one of those little portable photo booths that you can buy online.  I have seen these called "mini studios".  These usually come with lights and backdrops so you can get the shot you want. Photoshop is an amazing piece of software, but proper lighting is the key to appetizing food shots.

Thanks, all. I don't actually have access to the food to take a picture of it, this was sent by the manufacturer. I'm a little better photographer than that :)

Cut and paste it using Adobe Photoshop, and put it in the hand of a hot chick.

This will make the photo much more interesting.

> Thanks, all. I don't actually have access to the food to take a picture of it, this was sent by the manufacturer. I'm a little better photographer than that :)

How much would it cost to buy a piece of the cake? Or one very similar? For that matter, how about a stock photo of carrot cake?

I'm going to split the points. I was actually hoping to get more specific instructions, but encor gave me a direction to go in, and D Brugge spent so much time giving me great instructions on food photography that I think he deserves some points, too.

Oh, just a note to D Brugge, I use stock photography pretty often, I'm a big fan of Istock, but I was just trying to determine if one could take a terrible photo and manipulate it to look not bad. I think I've established that the answer is no. :) Thanks for everyone's help, even hot chick guy,

This is just some playing around, but using enkor's suggestions along with a few tricks of my own, this shows some of the directions that you can take an image such as this.

True, you can't usually make a terrible photo look great, but with some luck, you can make it less terrible.  

Not bad, thanks! I ended up using a stock photo cropped to work.