Swiss pastry chefs bake their way into record book

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND: A legion of Swiss pastry chefs on Sunday baked their way into the Guinness Book of World Records with a 1,221.6m chocolate Napoleon, the ATS news agency reported.

About 100 people, most of them pastry chefs, pulled together the 4.2-ton mille-feuille pastry, breaking a record set in Belgium 20 years ago by nearly 200m, ATS said.

After scrutinising each centimetre of the flaky, layered cake to ensure it was held together as a single block, Guinness judge Anna Orford declared the new record, to cheers from around 2,000 onlookers gathered at the Palexpo centre in Geneva.

A total of 250 people had helped prepare the cake over the past six months, according to Gilles Desplanches who initiated the project to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his pastry shop.

The giant pastry, consisting of 864 litres of cream, 576 litres of milk, 600kg of flour, 432kg of butter and 360kg of chocolate fondant, will be sliced into 30,000 pieces and sold.

The expected 100,000-Swiss franc proceeds will go to an organisation combating breast cancer, ATS reported.

Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge