Excited parents celebrating their child's first birthday are letting their loved ones smash up cake in a bizarre new craze.

The first birthday cake smash, which some have labelled a huge waste of sponge and icing, can cost up to £795 and leaves little ones in a huge mess.

Photographer and cake smash specialist Sandra Cullen charges parents around £100 for a birthday cake and photo-shoot and includes a baby bath for the little one to clean up afterwards.

But the photographer has received flak from parents who claim the birthday treat is wasteful.

Sandra, 42, said: "I work with a cake maker who does them to my specifications so I can ask the cake maker to do something a bit special.

"Cake smashes are very popular, I get a lot of enquiries and I've got quite a few lined up.

"I started doing cake smashes about two years ago after it started in the US and I heard about it from other photographers.

"It's not for everybody, being messy, it's a bit of fun to celebrate a first birthday.

"Babies are quite small and most of them play with the cake a little bit. To have it completely smashed, it's happened only once.

"There is always someone eating the cake, it's not that wasteful.

"It includes the cake and the decorations as well as the little outfit that the baby wears."

The sticky craze first began in America but is becoming increasingly popular in Britain with Sandra receiving dozens of requests over the past few years.

Sandra, of Shooters Hill, charges up to £125 for the cake and baby bath and then up to almost £800 for a photo album and digital images.

She said: "Charges for the cakes are £95 or £125 at the weekend, that's for my time and me travelling to them.

"A couple of weeks later I show them pictures and my packages start at £395 and go up to £795.

"I finish with a little baby bath so they can play in there, often the children enjoy that more than the cake.

"I'm quite surprised that so many people felt so strongly about cake smashes and some people have reservations that the baby is eating lots of cake or that it goes to waste.

"I want to show people that it is actually quite nice and the cake is not really, really smashed, it's the parents and family who end up eating most of it."