It's one of the worst-kept secrets of the pastry industry that when a baker hears you want a cake for a wedding, big birthday or similar event, the price seems to jump up about 20 percent.
Wedding cakes are particularly pricey and can come in over $500 - eye-watering for something that's going to end up in crumbs all down your party dress anyway.
But TikTok user Vanessa Strong, aka 'Messy Nessy', is proving popular with a cost-effective solution showing how you can turn three bog-standard supermarket cakes into a stunning ombre wedding cake.
The Australian mum uses 'Woolies' mud cakes for her recipe, but you can pick up the same ones from Countdown here in New Zealand for about $4 each. Strong uses two chocolate cakes and a caramel cake - but you could always use only chocolate if that's all they have in stock.
In the video, which has now racked up over 100,000 views, Strong places the first cake upside down, so she has a flat surface to ice with homemade buttercream. She then adds the next two cakes, icing in between each one.
After placing the final layer, Strong then ices the whole outside of the tower with buttercream and spreads it evenly with a spatula.
She then pipes layers of dark pink, light pink and cream on each layer of the cake to create an ombre look.
For the finishing touch, Strong places some artificial flowers on top, and the result is a gorgeous wedding cake that costs about $20.
Home cooks took to the comments where they expressed just how blown away they were by the hack.
"This is awesome! I'm going to use it for my daughter's 21st," one mum wrote.
"I thought about this before and wondered why people didn't do this," another commented. "Thank you for this. If it ain't broke, just fix it a little bit."
"Is this how cake decorators get rich?" another joked.
It's not the only 'cake hack' Strong has posted using the signature supermarket mud cake. She also posted a video of a floating Malteser cake that will get your mouth watering just watching the video.
