Talented baker creates life-size Shrek cake for film release

A talented baker who is renowned for her incredible cakes has created her biggest masterpiece to date – a life-sized version of SHREK.

Lara Mason, 39, spent 40 hours crafting the 6.5ft (1.9m) replica of the famous cartoon ogre out of vanilla cake and rich chocolate ganache.

The mum-of-two said the 400kg cake was so big that most of the decorating process needed to be done while balancing atop a set of ladders.

And it almost didn’t get finished after Shrek’s face fell off part way through to baking process thanks to the the summertime heat.

Lara admits she wanted to give up but persevered to finish the cake over a four day period at her home in Brownhills, near Walsall.

It was then sliced up and delivered to foodbanks across the West Midlands areas of Pelsall, Cannock and Chadsmoor.

Lara said she made her latest creation of the Dreamworks animated character to celebrate the announcement of the Shrek 5 movie next year.

She has been making cakes for over 13 years but has never made a cake this tall and wide in such a short time scale before.

Her previous creations have included replicas of Taylor Swift, The Grinch, Stitch, The Grinch and Deadpool – winning praise from actors like Ryan Reynolds and Jim Carrey.

Lara said: “There were 50 layers, it’s a big cake. It was 6.5ft so it was a tall cake. Ogres have layers I suppose, so it’s quite fitting.

“It’s a vanilla cake filled with chocolate ganache and covered with chocolate ganache.

“It’s huge. I’d say it weighs around 400kg, he was so wide and so tall, it was ridiculous.

“I said I could do it in less than a week, but it was a massive task to finish it. I ordered the cake slabs from a local industrial baker and then covered it in the ganache.

“We wanted to donate it to a foodbank after so we wanted it as fresh as possible for them. In the end 12 boxes of cake were donated.

“The only other cake we’ve done that’s taller is the Deadpool one, but this is the widest and tallest. This is the biggest fresh cake that can actually be eaten that I’ve made.

“I tried to sculpt the face out of chocolate ganache, I’d never done it before, but it fell off.

“Luckily I had some cake left so I was able to remodel it. I had to keep going to finish it.

“I really enjoy sculpting cartoon faces as there’s lots of expression in them, it’s more whimsical and fun.”

The monster 62 stone cake features 50 layers of vanilla sponge, coated with a chocolate ganache.

Lara managed to capture Shrek’s details perfectly, from his signature brown vest and white shirt, to his green fluted ears and smile.

She added: “There was a lot of chat online about the new Shrek movie and they put a teaser poster about Zendaya being the voice of Shrek’s daughter.

“I was around when the original Shrek came out and it was part of my childhood. So it was nice to share the Shrek universe with my kids.

“It was so different at the time to have this 3D animation, it was a massive inspiration for me as I got older.

“The funniest thing was delivering to the foodbank, I cut off his face and delivered part of his face to the cake box.

“They knew who it was straight away which was nice.”

Lara’s videos of the cake build have since reached nearly six million people across her Lara Cakes social media platforms.