Is it a sweet treat or a daft indulgence?

Most parents are desperate to stop children playing with their food, but the latest trend is to pay hundreds for photoshoots of toddlers destroying their birthday cakes online

Once it was enough to celebrate a child’s first birthday by throwing a modest party for close friends and family, with a glass of fizz for the adults and a slice of birthday cake for all — some of which would inevitably end up smeared round the face of the birthday boy or girl.

But while there’s still cake smeared over the little one, the difference now is that it’s highly likely the parents will have paid hundreds of pounds for the privilege.

Welcome to ‘cake smash’ — a way of marking your offspring’s first birthday cakes that involves letting them loose with a happy birthday cake order online, complete with lots of sticky icing, while a professional photographer captures the messy yet cute consequences.

The trend has been huge in the U.S. for several years and has now taken off here, with Coleen Rooney celebrating her son Cass’s second birthday with a professional cake smash photo session that she uploaded to her Instagram account last month.

Whether the cake smash is just a bit of silly fun, or a shameful example of wasteful over-privilege, depends on your perspective.

Sally Slack, a photographer based in Braintree, Essex, first had the idea of offering cake smash photo shoots in 2011 when she was living in the U.S.

When she returned to the UK, she decided to see if the idea would go down well here, too.

‘I enlisted a cake maker and was surprised at how popular it was,’ she says. ‘I’ve now photographed over 200 cake smashes!

‘Pricing for digital packages starts at £270, including the cake, but the average spend is about £400.’

Sally is now a dab-hand at doing shoots with babies. First, she takes some portraits of the child by themselves in their party best, plus family and sibling shots.

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Gracie Maile dips head-first into hers. For Tracey Maile, 47, an executive assistant from Chelmsford who is married to Greg, 46, a technical manager, a cake smash was a touching way to mark a milestone birthday for a much longed-for baby, their two-year-old daughter Gracie 

‘Then, once the child is getting bored, we introduce the cake and that often gives them a second wind. Some children are more adventurous than others; some need a bit of encouragement from Mum or Dad. Most play with the birthday cake online and eat very little.

‘There is a huge range of how much the children smash the cake. I’ve had children smash it completely to pieces, and others very little. For me, the most important thing is that they’re enjoying themselves. They’re never forced to do anything they don’t want to for the sake of an image.’

For many, a cake smash is planned months in advance.

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