Once in a while you stumble across something on the internet that’s just so genius, you couldn’t make it up.

That’s the case for LA-based photographer Christine McConnell, a poster girl for the 1950s, who creates the most deliciously grotesque and subversive cakes and bakes.

This is what happened when Christine decided to make a batch of wafflecones...

McConnell is part stylist, part performance artist with an acquired eye for retro, surreal and anarchic scenarios.

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Apple pie with crushed pecans and salted caramel in the shape of a Tim Burton-style tree (photo: ChristineMcConnell/Instagram)

A groomed, model-like figure, the 32-year-old loves nothing better than posing for a 1950s-style shoot wearing floral print frocks and pastel-coloured pinafores, a la Stepford Wives.

A literal take on chicken pot pie (photo: ChristineMcConnell/Instagram)

She then throws in a curveball that gives the whole scenario a barbaric twist – such as a giant bread version of the facehugger from Alien, chillingly life-like spiders or a raging bull voodoo cake.

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The cat seems a little suspicious of this shortbread version of a facehugger from Alien - we can't blame it (photo: ChristineMcConnell/Instagram)

McConnell’s addictive Instagram feed is testimony to where imagination (and plenty of baking skill) can take you, with a series of brilliantly dark and witty kitchen scenes and set-ups. Little wonder she has 23,000 followers, and counting.

The perfect Danzig cake (photo: ChristineMcConnell/Instagram)

Her creations land somewhere between Tim Burton, Desperate Housewives and The Addams Family, with a dash of Hitchcock mixed in for good measure.

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Christine acquires a scorpion face (photo: ChristineMcConnell/Instagram)

McConnell trained as a hair and make-up artist but taught herself to bake watching YouTube videos.

She names her idols as Tim Burton, Vincent Price, Alfred Hitchcock, and Paula Deen.

Samoa tarantula cookies (photo: ChristineMcConnell/Instagram)

"I’m very enamoured with the style of the 1940's, '50's, and '60's," she told BuzzFeed. "But I love the goofy sense of comedy that came out of the 1980’s. So my work is kind of a pretty/spooky combination of those things."

Christine in housewife mode (photo: ChristineMcConnell/Instagram)

"I really just bake for friends family and fun. The baking work is so complicated I wouldn’t even know how to charge for it," she added.

"I have a new idea almost every other minute and I hope I never lose the energy to keep learning and trying new stuff."

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