ENTERING Hannah Pinchin’s Southampton home, there can be no doubt that someone who loves cake lives here.

Cupcake bunting hangs from the ceiling and the surfaces are decorated with everything from a “cake fund”

money box to little cupcake salt and pepper shakers.

Even the mixing bowl she uses to make cakes is decorated with cupcakes.

And Hannah herself is wearing a large cupcake clip in her hair and a necklace that proclaims “I love cake”.

In fact, despite her slim frame, she confesses to typically eating three cupcakes a day. It’s fortunate that she loves cakes as making them has rather taken over her life.

At the beginning of the year she decided to start her own cake-making business and we are chatting on the day the website for Hannah Banana Bakery has gone live.

At the moment she’s fitting the cake business in around working full time as a research assistant at Portsmouth University and because her cakes are always made fresh she is frequently up baking late into the night or from as early as 5.30am.

Hannah’s business has grown organically out of her passion. Having been brought up a vegetarian she turned vegan nine years ago, cutting all animal products, including dairy and eggs, out of her diet. But she wasn’t prepared to sacrifice cake to her principles.

“I’ve always had a really sweet tooth.

When I became vegan there weren’t really any vegan cake recipes around so I started ‘veganising’ recipes myself,” says the 30-year-old, from Shirley.

“I kept playing round with different recipes and would make around three batches of cakes and cookies a week.”

The idea for Hannah Banana Bakery came when a friend asked her to make a vegan wedding cake.

“I had so much good feedback on how it looked and tasted, even though I don’t think anyone there was vegan, that it inspired me to think I could do more.”

Hannah is passionate about providing vegans – as well as those with food allergies such as egg and lactose intolerance – with the same experience of having beautiful, delicious cakes as everyone else.

She has spent months and gone to huge expense experimenting with recipes to find the perfect way to make everything from flower paste, used to make delicate flowers to decorate celebration cakes, to cakepops (cakes on a stick and dipped in chocolate).

“There are people around who make vegan cakes but unless you’re in London or Brighton you’re mostly limited to having chocolate or vanilla.

If that’s your favourite then fine but I’ve tried to make every flavour I can imagine.”

The cupcakes on her website include chocolate and Oreo, banana and peanut butter and even mojito, and she can make celebration cakes to order in any flavour – a recent order was for lemon and lavender!

“A cake is your treat and you should be able to have it anyway you want it,” she says passionately.

“It should be pretty and it should taste great. A lot of vegan food can have a bit of a twang but it’s important to me that people can’t tell that my cakes are vegan.

“Sometimes when people make vegan cake it tends to have a bit of a ‘school dinner’ feel to it – a big slab of something. And often it’s got things like dried fruit or muesli in it. I’m not a rabbit. I don’t want to eat healthily. I want to eat cake!”

The result of Hannah’s passion is cakes that are both delicious and beautiful. Even the standard cupcakes are enticingly attractive but the made-to-order celebration cakes, for birthdays, weddings, etc, are a sight to behold.

Recent creations include a Nemo cake, pictured right, which took five hours to ice.

Hannah is not only particular about what goes into her cakes in terms of them being suitable for vegans. She also always uses local ingredients where possible and organic fair trade ones when it is not.

“Unfortunately a lot of my ingredients are more expensive because they’re organic and fair trade but that’s how I live so I don’t want to compromise on what I sell.

“If I make a lemon cake it’s got two organic lemons in it.

It’s not as cheap and easy as using lemon essence but the taste is so much better. I’d never give someone a cake that I wasn’t 100 per cent happy with.”

While the cost of Hannah’s ingredients eats into her profits she says she doesn’t pass it onto her customers.

“I don’t think people should be priced out because they are vegan and they want their cake to look nice.”

Although Hannah’s cakes are all suitable for vegans that doesn’t mean only vegans can eat them – a point that people sometimes struggle to grasp.

“I’ve done stalls before and people have been looking at the cakes and said ‘oh, they’re no good for me because I’m not vegan.’ But you don’t have to be vegan to enjoy them. All my recipes are tasted on vegans and non-vegans alike.”

However, even if non-vegans might be slow to catch on to Hannah Banana Bakery, business is already booming.

She is already booked up for celebration cakes for Christmas and has been sending deliveries all over the country – including lots for small villages in Scotland, for some reason!

“I think it’s because I do mail order,” she says.

“That’s one thing that I wanted to do – make sure that people could get vegan cake wherever they live.”

It’s early days for the business and Hannah doesn’t know how it’s going to go but she’s happy.

“Even if only a few people buy a cake and it just ends up being a sideline, that’s fine. I just want vegans to be able to have good cakes that look beautiful.”

l For more information and to place an order visit hannahbananabakery.co.uk or find Hannah Banana Bakery on Facebook.