Ceramic designer, 26, creates amazing novelty cakes - PHOTO

These amazing novelty cakes were modelled on characters from children's films and television adverts - and took up to a staggering 50 hours to bake and decorate.Ceramic designer Vicki Smith, 26, creates the spectacular 'super-cakes', featuring designs such as Finding Nemo, Betty Boop, the Corpse Bride and Wallace and Gromit, at her home in Flintshire, north Wales.She sketches an image of each cake design on to a board and chooses a variety of tin sizes to suit it - before baking around 15 to 20 smaller, individual cakes.She then sandwiches the bits of cake together using jam or butter cream, carefully carves them with a knife and finally starts the lengthy process of decorating the entire cake.The talented designer has won a string of prizes for her work - with her cakes becoming so popular she has even received messages of support from U.S. pastry chef and TV personality Duff Goldman on Twitter.One of Ms Smith's most impressive creations is a detailed sponge cake featuring a baby meerkat named Oleg from the Compare The Market television adverts.The cake, which took 50 hours to create, scooped top prize in the decorative exhibit category at Manchester’s Cake International show last year - while her stunning Coca Cola polar bear creation, which took 40 hours to make, won gold in the sculpted novelty cake category.And her brown-and-yellow turtle cake with fondant fins - dedicated to her grandmother, Bella, who died last year aged of 91 - was also awarded a top prize at the festival.'The idea for the meerkat baby came after I finally had time to catch up on Coronation Street,' said Ms Smith, who spends at least 40 hours making each of her novelty cakes. 'Compare the Meerkat sponsors the show and when I saw the new character, baby Oleg, I fell in love with him instantly.'He was so cute and I instantly wanted to design him for my next cake. He took me 50 hours to make, it was such a long process. When I applied to the Manchester’s Cake International, I was in the decorative exhibit which means you can be much more adventurous with your designs.'I had already started a Coca Cola polar bear by then, but I had enough time to enter my meerkat as well and I took gold for both of them.'She added that her polar bear cake had even won praise from Coca Cola, which tweeted her saying the furry white cub ‘looked good enough to eat’.Ms Smith, who studied Art at college, started baking and decorating cakes in 2011 after she ordered a large white cake for her lorry driver boyfriend Lee Timmin's 27th birthday. Disappointed by the cake that arrived, she decided to give put her ceramic skills to good use - and created her own two-part HGV lorry cake.But the designer said she had always had a 'keen eye' for detail - saying: 'My teachers were always impressed by my intricate detailing, especially in ceramics.(dailymail.co.uk)ANN.Az