Mum's stock image birthday cake mistake costs her $380

The picture Lauren's mum posted on Facebook and the replica cake. Photo / Twitter

A UK's mum's post involving an innocent stock image of a birthday cake on social media ended up costing her £200 ($380).

After seeing it was her daughter's friend's birthday on Facebook, Virginia Kavanagh decided to share a photo of the "Happy 18th Birthday" cake she found on Google.

The treat was a personalised frozen cake with the name Beth on the front and features the Disney characters Olaf and Elsa.

"Happy 18th birthday princess, hope you have a wonderful day, you have always been our favourite!! Lots of love VV & Stephen xxx," Kavanagh posted with the photo.

However, Beth thought her friend's mum made the cake specifically for her and commented on Kavanagh's post.

"OMG CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!! Thank you so much, Virginia and Stephen! I'll need to pop round today and have some xxx."

After Kavanagh saw the comment she panicked and contacted a cakemaker to make a replica cake for the next day, at an eye-watering cost of $380.

Her daughter Lauren shared the hilarious mix-up on Twitter years later and people loved the story.

To this day I still think about when my mum found this random cake on goggle to post happy birthday to Beth and Beth thought my mum bought her the cake. My mum felt too bad to admit it wasn’t hers so she paid £200 to get a replica made for the next day 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/bO3J668X6F

— Lauren (@Lauzyfaulks) August 27, 2019

"Your poor mum, bless her," one wrote.

But the story doesn't end there. Lauren's mother followed up her daughter's post, revealing that Beth hadn't eaten any of the cake.

She said: "Yes poor me!!! I felt so bad for Beth, I wanted to cry!!

"What you failed to add is she then didn't eat the feckin thing and left it at ours to go hard and I was furious!!!"