Sweet Horror: More than a mouthful

Looking at her impressive cake creations, you'd never believe that London baker Lily Vanilli (Jones) is self-taught. The baker went to the school of YouTube.

"In my own kitchen, with my own rules, I could take my education in any direction I wanted to," said the English rose.

Recently she attended the Spier Secret Food Festival conference in Cape Town to give local food lovers a taste of her extraordinary skills. Dwarfed by a projected image of a dripping blood heart cake, with valves and an aorta, Vanilli spoke about her love of the cake.

"It all started with my fascination with the history of cake and its rituals and symbolism," she said.

As slides changed, cemetery cupcakes, with gingerbread biscuit gravestones, took up the wall space behind her.

"People eat cake for ceremonial reasons," she said. "But today, cake has largely lost its mysticism. Cakes used to be offered to gods and spirits as nourishment for their passage to the afterlife. We still use cakes for celebrations, but the spiritual aspect of cake offerings has largely disappeared."

In ancient Celtic rituals cakes were perceived as a form of divination. Cakes were burnt in certain places and the receiver of the burnt part was offered as a human sacrifice.

"We know this because bodies burnt in sacrificial rites were found to have remains of the scorched cake inside them," said Vanilli. "I got that from a favourite history book, Nectar and Ambrosia by Tamra Andrews, which goes through the religious and mythological importance of different foods and ingredients. Cake seems to have a macabre history in almost all cultures."

She said the Industrial Revolution had a big impact on modern cakes, making them more common as ingredients became readily available, the cake ring was developed and temperature control allowed for lightness in the final product.

"The cake changed and became all too common, but lately there's been a new creative freedom associated with the art. Patisserie has changed a lot. Chefs are expected to be ingenious."

Vanilli has thrown out the rule books and gone for total experimentation, and her many high-profile clients love her for it.

They have the recession to thank for access to her prodigious talent.

"I couldn't find a job, so I started selling the odd cake. It had been a hobby for years. I didn't see myself going into the cake business, but I set up a stall, got a website and it developed by word-of-mouth."

Now she runs a bakery in London and creates made-to-order cakes. Her clients include Elton John, Lulu Guinness, Sadie Frost and Vogue Magazine. She also has published the cookbooks A Zombie Ate My Cupcake and Sweet Tooth.

The weirdest cake she's been asked to make? "I made a lifelike replica of a man's head in a box as a Valentine's Day present from a woman to her boyfriend."

• See lilyvanilli.com