THE ‘burgers’ are really chocolate fudge brownies sandwiched between light vanilla sponge.

The ‘pizza’ is a Victoria sponge topped with butter icing, brownies, fondant icing and grated white chocolate.

Welcome to the confusing but delicious world of FoodieCakes.

The Southampton company launched just before Christmas and their amazing creations are already winning them a loyal following.

It all started a couple of years ago when Nikki Dixon, now 22, baked a birthday cake for her boyfriend that looked like a burger, in honour of his love of them.

She had made other novelty cakes before but this one was a big hit and her friends began to ask her to make other food-themed cakes for them.

Nikki studied fashion, promotion and imaging at university and secured a graphic design job with a Southampton company, where she met her now business partner Eddie Cook.

The pair realised that with their business and design skills and Nikki’s talent for creating stunning cakes, this was too good a business opportunity to pass up and FoodieCakes was born.

“When people see them and realise they’re cakes, they say ‘that’s messing with my mind’, but everyone has said how good they taste,” says Nikki.

“Any flavour and colour can go together so it does trick people’s minds.”

FoodieCakes has amazing attention to detail, from crinkle-cut chips that are really shortbread through an incredibly detailed ‘beans on toast’ cake to little pots of ‘raspberry ketchup’, ‘vanilla mayonnaise’ and ‘lemon mustard’.

Nikki says designing the packaging and branding has been as important to her and Eddie as getting the cakes right, and they have perfected the little details, such as the containers their ‘fast food’ cakes are in and ‘peas’ with their traditional British ‘pie and mash’ cake.

The mini-cakes, which include ‘hot dogs’, ‘burgers’, ‘sandwiches’ and ‘salmon and cream cheese bagels’ have proved particularly popular, with everything from children’s birthday parties to corporate events, while Nikki loves the challenge of coming up with a design for a bespoke creation – at the moment she is working on a ‘jacket potato and beans’ cake.

Nikki is busy baking all day to fill the orders that are coming in and hopes to be able to take staff on soon.

“I wouldn’t say I’m surprised by the success because I have genuinely believed in what we do from day one,” she says.

“We thought it was a fun idea and that other people would love it, too.”

  • For more information, visit: foodiecakes.co.uk