Lifesize Shrek cake donated to food banks

Lara Mason has racked up millions of views with videos of herself making lifesize cake replicas

A baker was watched by millions of viewers on social media making a life-size model of Shrek, which she then cut up and donated to food banks.

Lara Mason has previously made cake replicas of superstar Taylor Swift, Deadpool, and the Grinch, winning praise from actors like Ryan Reynolds and Jim Carrey.

The Walsall baker has now recreated the popular ogre, standing at over 6.5ft (1.98m) tall, which was carefully sculpted in 40 hours over a period of four days.

Shrek was made out of chocolate ganache and 50 layers of vanilla cake, with Ms Mason joking: "Even ogres have layers."

Ms Mason, whose company is called Lara Cakes, usually bakes her own sponge for her creations, but with the time it takes to craft the models, this can sometimes lead to the cake becoming stale.

"In order to keep this cake fresh so it could be donated, we asked a bakery close by to bake the cake for us in bulk," she told the BBC. "That's a lot of cake."

She has been making cakes for more than 13 years but said she has never made a cake this tall and wide in such a short time scale before and had to stand on ladders to do a lot of the decorating.

"So that was a real challenge," she said.

However, after seeing the teasers for the new Shrek 5 film, which will be released next year, she said she knew she had to try and recreate it.

Shrek's face fell off overnight due to the heat and the weight of the chocolate ganache

To make Shrek's face, Ms Mason covered it in chocolate ganache, which she used to sculpt the ogre's distinctive features.

But she was shocked to discover the summer heatwave had caused the face to fall off overnight.

"That was an absolute fail," she said. "The face was far too heavy, and the ganache was far too soft, so I had to start all over again with that, and I used kebab skewers just to give the cake something to grip onto.

"I really was ready to give up when the face fell off as I was against the clock to get it finished, but I persevered and managed to finish bang on schedule.

"Knowing the cake was going to a good cause, I wanted to put my all into it, so I worked extra hard to get it finished."

"Ogres have layers - 50 layers of vanilla cake to be exact," jokes Ms Mason

Videos of her building the cake have been seen by nearly six million people across social media, and once she had shot all of her footage, the cake was cut up and delivered to local food banks to be enjoyed.

"Walsall North Food Bank in Pelsall and Cannock and District Food Bank in Chadsmoor were more than happy to take a big delivery of yummy cake," she said.