Nick Makrides is the brains and the vision behind the rapidly growing YouTube channel The Scran Line, and if you haven't heard of The Scran Line yet – well, you heard it here first. Makrides makes incredible food videos, focusing on colorful cupcakes that will inspire any pro baker or beginner to have fun in the kitchen. Raspberry lemonade cupcakes? Blueberry french toast cupcakes? Matcha? Tiramisu? Rosée champagne? Whatever you'd want in a cupcake, Makrides has done it. He's one of thousands of food YouTubers, but what makes the artistic Australian stand out is his graphic design background that adds style and tons of fun to his videos.

You can watch his full-length cooking videos on YouTube, or his short clips on Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. Prepare to crave cupcakes like never before!

Read on for HNGN's exclusive interview with Makrides in which he tells us the secret of making delicious food and all the magic that goes into his artistic, colorful food videos.

HNGN: Hi Nick! It's so great to meet you. I just discovered your videos recently and have watched almost all of them in a week. They're just captivating. The visuals are so beautiful!

MAKRIDES: Thank you very much! I'm glad you like them.

My first question for you is about your upbringing. Was your house a food-centric home?

Oh absolutely, of course, yes! My grandma and my mom are amazing cooks, so I just grew up watching them cook. Since I was little, I loved eating. I still love eating, but when I was little I loved it a little bit too much (laughs).

How did you end up making these videos?

It's a long story, I'll tell you it. When I finished high school, I wanted to be a chef, but at that point in my life, my mom kind of encouraged me not to do it because she thought it wasn't really suited to me. My exposure to different types of foods was not limited, but I didn't really want to eat lots of types of foods, which is important for a chef. The other thing that I was really passionate about was art and design, so I went and studied graphic design for three years and went and worked in a studio for about nine months. By the end, I couldn't take sitting at a desk any longer, so I kind of took a break and went back to school and studied fitness. Then I had this fantastic idea of joining the military (laughs), and that didn't last very long. I was in the Royal Australian Navy for seven weeks in recruits school. It was an amazing experience. I don't regret going, and I don't regret leaving either.

A common question I get is where I get the name The Scran Line, and I got it from my time in the navy. Lots of militaries have their own terminologies, and food was called "scran." The scran line was the line-up where you'd wait for your food.

Where did you go next?

I studied commercial cookery for a year and then decided to travel Europe for three months, ending in France for two weeks. France was amazing. I'm obsessed with macaroons. When I came back, I applied for a job in a cupcake store and worked there for two years. I decided in that time to start a YouTube channel. I'd been watching so many for such a long time, so I just decided to give it a go myself. That's the long story!

The videos are so well-designed and so distinctive. What are your aesthetic inspirations?

For me, because I've been watching YouTube for such a long time, I realized that it's really oversaturated with YouTube cooks. Unless you can find a way to be different, you're just another YouTube cook. The Scran Line for me is a creative outlet. I see it more about design than about cupcakes. So when I come up with a cupcake, it might be based on a flavor, a shape, a color, a song that I love, a mood – inspiration comes from many different places, but the first thing that comes into play are my design skills.

I've been doing the channel for almost four years, and it's only been in the last six months that I've found what I really want to do with it, and that's cupcakes. In that time I've done a lot of experimentation with different techniques and filming styles, and that's kind of how I've gotten to the point that I'm at now. The inspiration I get is from everywhere.

So who eats all the cupcakes?

Up until the start of this year, I did eat a lot of the cupcakes. I've decided to stop eating so many cupcakes, because it's starting to take its toll. So we give them away to family and friends, and we have chickens in the backyard that are happy to eat them if nobody wants them. My family got sick of cupcakes, so sometimes it gets hard to find someone to give them to.

That's crazy! Please, someone, take these visually stunning, delicious cupcakes! When I watch the videos, one thing I notice is that everything is so clean and crisp, especially the cupcake batter scooping. Does it require many takes to get those shots or are you just an amazing scooper?

I am good at the scooping (laughs). I did it every day for two years, and I had to do it much, much quicker than what I do now. The place that I worked at also made sure that everything was presented well. I have this pet peeve, which I avoid completely on my channel. It's when the cupcakes tins are filled too little or too much. It might come out over or under. And it shouldn't look that way! They should look perfect. Cupcakes should look good. That was something we practiced a lot.

Do you have any help filming and editing the videos?

It's all me. I'm a bit of a control freak. I can't have anyone doing anything at the moment because I want it done the way I want it done, and I know how to do it! Everything, the editing, the filming, researching and developing the recipes, is done by me. I have a couple of base recipes that I adapt to different flavors.

You put out two cupcake videos per week, and you have the full-length YouTube, the shorter Facebook, the even shorter Instagram, and the Snapchat videos to make and edit. How much time does this take? Are you doing it full-time?

At the moment, I work every single day, all day. I've been doing that for five or six months now. I love doing this job, it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy, but because I have the experience working with cupcakes, I can come up with ideas pretty quickly, but all the videos take me a full week to do everything for all eight videos. I also try to reply to all the comments on the social media. It's quite a big task, but I couldn't think of anything else I would want to be doing. I've found a good rhythm, though, and I've gotten quite efficient.

Do you have a preference between the short, musical Facebook videos and the full-length YouTube baking tutorial videos?

One part of me says the YouTube videos, because they make the most sense. But when I first started The Scran Line, I really underestimated Facebook. It's only in the last six months that I've started making Facebook-specific videos, that go for 30-60 seconds, and those videos have really helped the page grow. I really love doing the Facebook ones too, though. They're fun and energetic, and they get to give the viewers a teaser of the full YouTube video. I like both!

A video posted by The Scran Line (@thescranline) on Jan 8, 2016 at 4:33am PST

What's the hardest thing about having an online presence?

The hardest thing about having an online presence is the haters. I know the tactics to use when you receive that kind of response, but it's actually only just started for me in the past couple of weeks. I think all designers take their work very personally. I have a lot of pride in what I do. I don't upload anything that I'm not proud to show. I've made plenty, plenty of videos that I haven't uploaded just because the final product isn't something that belongs on Scran Line. It's hard to read people's comments. Some people put no thought into what they say. Others will leave constructive criticism, but it's hard to not take it all personally. I've had some really horrible people comment on my stuff. I've just decided to block and ignore them. I've realized that with all the haters, there's heaps and heaps more people who love your work. At the moment, that's definitely what makes it hard, but I love being able to show people what I love making.

On YouTube or in real life, who's your most important food inspiration?

In real life, I would have to say my grandma and my mom. Something that I think is really important in cooking is that you cook with love. When you cook with love, if you're cooking at home or at a restaurant, the person who's eating that food, whatever it is, is gonna know right away. The way you present it, the way it tastes, whatever – they'll know that you've cooked it with care and love, and I learned that from my mom and my grandma.

Online, I'd say a YouTube cook named Laura Vitale. She's quite big now, she started six or seven years ago. When the pizzeria that she and her father ran closed down in the financial crisis, she decided to make a YouTube channel to share her family recipes. I watched her since the beginning, and she's a huge inspiration to me. The way she talks about food, how much she loves it, the way she presents it and the recipes she chooses - everything about her channel, I really love. There's loads of other YouTubers that I love: Donal Skehan, Elise from My Cupcake Addiction. There's a bunch.