AN East Lancashire baker has created an exceedingly scary cake to mark top film director Tim Burton’s birthday.

Tracey Rothwell, from Baucp, who is a big fan of the Hollywood movie-maker, has used her own vivid imagination to create a character from one of his films.

And it was so frightfully good, 100 bakers from around the world joined her ‘collaborative bake’ to celebrate the wacky director’s 55th birthday.

Tracey, from The Little Cherry Cake Company, said: “I set up a secret Facebook page and invited a few bakers I thought might like to get involved.

“From that, it just snowballed and it really wasn’t long before we had 100 bakers.

“There were bakers from Ireland, Malaysia, Australia, Spain and the US – some who bake just for a hobby and even some TV bakers, like Karen Portaleo, who is really famous in America.

“We’d discuss ideas in private and send each other pictures of our designs and it was so much fun.”

The army of bakers, which included Rosie Cake-Diva from Clitheroe, made intricate and finely sculpted tributes to all of Tim Burton’s best films including the Corpse Bride, Alice in Wonderland and Tracey’s favourites, Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

A website set up by Tracey's friend Phillipa Christy, showing the 100 cakes, has had 500,000 hits since it went live on Sunday.

Tracey said: “The website kept crashing because so many people were trying to access it.

“It’s sort of gone viral and it’s been reported on all over the place – we were even featured on MTV!”

“Tim Burton doesn’t use the internet but I’m hoping that it’ll get so big that someone will tell him to have a look at it.

“We’ve made a collage with photographs of all the cakes and so we are hoping to send that over to him in Hollywood.”

TV FANS JOIN GREAT BAKING TREND

RESIDENTS in Lancashire have been whipped up into a baking frenzy according to course providers in East Lancashire.

Cake experts said that they have been ‘inundated’ with requests to attend classes after shows like the Great British Bake Off inspired a generation of wannabe Mary Berrys keen to impress their family and friends.

And a host of courses and clubs have now sprung up around the county to cater for them.

While a Clandestine Cake Club was set up in the Ribble Valley in 2011 to swap recipes and hold informal communal baking classes, from next month in Blackburn and Darwen cooks will be able to begin an evening cake decorating course and one-off cupcake making class at Blackburn College.

The women only Inter-Madrassah Organisation also offers free one off cake decorating workshops from its base in Clarence House in Clarence Road, Blackburn.

Meanwhile Accrington and Rossendale College said it had doubled the potential class size on their catering course and one-day baking classes after inquiries rocketed by 30 per cent.

Sandy Sutcliffe, programme leader for hospitality, said that enrollers on the full time catering course had cited the Great British Bake Off as a main reasons for signing up.

Nelson College will also be running a 30-week evening cake decorating course while Burnley’s Dream Cakes by Kathy on Manchester Road hosts specialist classes that focus on different cake decorating styles from human figure sculpture to a VW campervans.

The Darwen Deli in Bolton Road will also host regular evening cupcake making classes throughout autumn.

The assistant manager, Laura Williams, said: “TV shows have encouraged a massive resurgence at our shop and everyone seems obsessed.”