The baker turning A-listers into life-size desserts

Sorry, but any cake Taylor Swift may receive for her birthday this year on Dec. 13 — whether it’s from her NFL star fiancé Travis Kelce or the Haim sisters — won’t hold a candle to this.

Meet British baker Lara Mason, the confectionery queen behind Lara Cakes, who crafts life-size celebrity-themed desserts. Her Swift-inspired creation is equal parts “Wi$h Li$t” and touchdown as the pop star hoists the Vince Lombardi Trophy (given to Super Bowl champions, including Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs, who last won in 2024).

“I had planned to make one of Taylor and Travis, but, unfortunately, I ran out of time,” Mason tells Yahoo. “He was going to be in an Eras tour sweatshirt — a supporting-your-partner theme. I think Swifties loved [the end result], but Chiefs fans were incensed (‘Taylor didn’t win the Super Bowl’) — and it went viral.”

Such is the life of a TikTok baking sensation. Mason says the drama only boosted her following.

“The thing is, there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” she says. “It’s like: Talk whatever you want to talk about the cakes. It gets [the word] out there.”

Mason, 39, invited Yahoo into her Birmingham, England, studio, where the magic happens. That’s not an exaggeration. Behind her stand two life-like Wicked cakes, of Elphaba and Glinda, that move. With a pull of a handle, Cynthia Erivo’s cake twin moves up and down. The baker has more than 4.1 million TikTok followers and 454,000 on Instagram, including — this week — Wicked director Jon M. Chu.

Mason started making cakes 14 years ago when her mother-in-law meticulously planned her anniversary party, but — oh, the horror! — forgot the cake.

“I’d been watching a lot of Cake Boss, so I said, ‘Shall I try and just throw something together?’” she recalls. “It went down really well at the party, even if looking back on it now, it was terrible.”

Mason’s first big cake was Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean.

“There was a local competition for cake designing, and someone said, ‘Can you imagine if someone made a life-size cake of a person?’ And I thought, Yeah, I could imagine that,” she says. “I [won] gold.”

Her first cake to go viral was Toy Story-themed. She started putting her work on TikTok in 2019. In 2020, when everyone was on their phone all the time because of the pandemic, her likes “went absolutely insane.”

Mason makes around 15 to 20 big cakes a year, with the planning for each taking approximately one month: three weeks for design and sourcing, five days for execution. And lately she’s been outsourcing the sponge cake to speed up the process — nobody wants a stale Glinda.

“From planning to finished cake, a cake would typically take me around 120 hours of work,” she says. Each uses approximately 88 to 110 pounds of modeling chocolate, can weigh up to 220 pounds and feeds 300 to 400 people.

Cakes that are not commissioned — and just for the content — are donated to food banks when she’s done. Some of her clients have included Sex Education star Gillian Anderson, who shared a photo of the NSFW cake Mason made for her on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2022, as well as singer Jason Derulo, U.K. soccer player Kyle Walker and the British soap opera EastEnders.

While she’s working, Mason keeps her studio at a chilly 41 degrees so that the cakes stay fresh and the mold doesn’t melt. She often has to wear a sweater and earmuffs to work.

Her biggest challenge? A snow globe cake for her 8-year-old daughters, who literally went inside it. They’re quite used to mom’s day job, she says.

“I actually brought them yesterday to see my Wicked cakes, and they were more excited about eating icing than the cakes flying behind me. I think they’ve kind of ‘been there, seen that,’ but eventually I’ll be able to surprise them again.”

For 2026, Mason plans Moana and Toy Story 5 cakes to coincide with new film releases.

“I’m definitely gonna be making a big Buzz Lightyear,” she says. “Otherwise, I like to wait and see what’s trending. Also, if I don’t actually have an interest in the movie, the cake never turns out good, so it has to be something that I’m really into.”

And what about Swift’s wedding cake? Mason’s game.

“I would absolutely love to make Taylor Swift’s wedding cake — though I can’t really see her ordering a life-size cake of herself,” she laughs. “And I’m not really the girl who makes the flowery, pretty cakes. But if she wanted a life-size cake of Travis for a groomsman cake [or bachelorette party], I’m available. She has a lot of friends, so a big cake would work out really well.”