Birthday cake, chocolate cake, Black Forest gateau, Victoria Sponge, Sachertorte or lemon drizzle. There are thousands of different types of cakes from all over the world and each one is unique, but what is the biggest cake in the world and for whose birthday was the biggest birthday cake in the world made? Read on to find out.
From perfectly formed fairy cakes to the biggest and most elaborate birthday, wedding and celebration cakes, the world’s biggest bakes are a sight to behold. But when it comes to the question of the biggest cake in the world, who are the creative culinary contenders?
Cake brings people together for all types of celebrations such as weddings and birthdays and festivals. The word cake itself comes from the old Norse word ‘kaka’ and the first ‘cakes’ from ancient Egypt were more like bread sweetened with honey, nuts and dried fruit.
The Romans and Greeks created the basic recipes we still follow – a mixture of eggs, flour, and milk sweetened with honey – and little changed until the eighteenth century with the advent of milled flour and refined sugar. Then the world got creative!
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tea time was a society event. The cakes were as elaborate and delicate as the china and the gowns. Today, the competition to bake the biggest cake ever continues, as long as there are enough eggs and a big enough mixing bowl!
There are a number of different ‘world’s biggest cake’ records, so for the purpose of this article we’ll list the largest cake in some of the most prominent categories, as well as the biggest birthday cake in the world. Can’t have been easy blowing out all those candles…!
World’s Tallest Cake
Tall layered wedding cake (Photo: peaz via Getty Images)
A contender for the world’s biggest cake was made by the Hkasima-Nilasari Culinary School in Indonesia in 2008, and the dimensions are as incredible as the list of ingredients.
The cake was thirty-three metres tall, nine metre wide and weighed just over eighteen tons. Among the ingredients were 1.6 tons of sugar, 243 kg of powdered chocolate, 3.2 tons of eggs, 100 litres of liquid sugar, 1.6 tons of margarine and almost two tons of powdered sugar.
World’s Largest Black Forest Gateau
A Black Forest Gateau Cake ( Photo: Marina Lohrbach via Getty Images)
Known in German as Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, the famous Black Forest gateau is a delicious mix of chocolate cake, lashings of whipped cream, cherries and more than a light dribble cherry liqueur.
Not quite the biggest cake in the world but close, the largest Black Forest gateau was made in Germany in 2006, it weighed almost three tons and covered an area of 80m2. The ingredients included 5,600 eggs, 800 kg of cherries, 120 litres of cherry liqueur and 700 litres of whipped cream.