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Bakers in Kerala have created a 600-ft long cake to mark the 131st anniversary of cake-making in India.
Officials from the Limca Book of Records have certified the 3,120kgs cake as the biggest vegetarian cake made in India.
“It took roughly 14 hours to bake and another 14 hours to put icing on the cake,” said M P Ramesh, a Kochi baker who led the team of 26 expert cake-makers who worked overnight to finish the task.
They used “readymix” supplied by the UAE-based IFFCO-Allana group for making the gigantic cake. The organisers could not quantify each ingredient as it was pre-mixed.
The mammoth cake contains 720 figures depicting the origin and evolution of cake-making since 1883.
The main theme was the story of cake-making in India as conceived by the organisers.
Ramesh’s bakery also holds the Limca record for ‘the most decorated Indian cake’ - certified in 2006.
The organisers plan to cut the cake today evening and distribute it to thousands of people gathered at an international convention centre in Thrissur.
The organisers said they had decided against using eggs so that vegetarians too could eat it.
“We expect at least 100,000 visitors to come,” said Ramesh, who hails from the coastal town of Thalassery, famous for its bakers and acrobats.
In 2012, he baked a cake weighing 1,200 kg for the Bakers Association of Kerala (BAKe). That effort too earned him an entry into the Indian records book for the biggest vegetarian cake baked.
Local bakers claim the first cake using local ingredients was baked in November 1883 by Mampilly Bappu under the guidance of a British settler at the biscuit factory founded by Bappu in Thalassery three years before. Ramesh belongs to the Mampilly family.
“Before that, the country had only one bakery which was run by a British businessman in Calcutta catering to the British,” claimed P M Sankaran, president, BAKe.
“Bapu popularised the British tastes among Indians. Slowly, bakers from Thalassery spread out to other parts of India”.
Kerala has a large number of bakeries, spread across its towns and villages. People from the state also run several bakeries in the Gulf countries.
Ramesh designed the icing on the cake as a celebration of his family’s tradition that has slowly become part of the town’s identity. He calls the strawberry-flavoured cake as “a piece of art laced with history”.