Mountainous cake unveiled in La Paz

For anyone looking to get their afternoon sugar fix there was no better place to be than La Pazs Camacho Plaza on Monday where a cake of mountainous proportions was served up in 10,000 slices.It took 85 bakers a week to make what they say is South Americas biggest cake.Gastronomy students and instructors at the Bolivia Gourmet Gastronomy Institute used more than 11,000 eggs, and hundreds of kilogrammes (pounds) of flour, cocoa and sugar to make the pastry in honour of the 203rd anniversary of the liberation of La Paz.The bakers worked in three shifts around the clock to beat, mix and bake the cake which was inspired by Bolivias largest mountain, Mount Illimani, which towers over the capital city.A team of students and staff was needed to work together to pour the litres of batter into 400 cake moulds to be carefully baked in the schools ovens.No detail was missed in the massive undertaking as the cooks whipped up gallons of dulce de leche, a caramel like filling, to fill the layers of the cake which also had layers of strawberries and chocolate fillings.Right now we are making the dulce de leche filling for South Americas biggest cake. We are filling it with dulce de leche which goes with the cake.We are using 300 litres (80 gallons) of milk. It is hard work, but we do it with love, said Bolivia Gourmet Gastronomy Institute student Lourdes Garcia.On Sunday night, once all the pieces and sweet fillings were prepared and ready, the team used two trucks provided by the city to rush the weeks worth of baking to the city square where it was unveiled on Monday.The team assembled the sheets of cake into a sweet chocolate mountain to mirror the famed Mount Illimani.Students slathered the cake in gallons of whipped cream to represent the icy peak of the snow-capped mountain.At five metres tall, seven metres long and five metres wide the director of the school, Oscar Mora, said the cake could possibly be the largest in the world, though they were not able to register with Guinness but are documenting their achievement for possible inclusion in the famous listing later.However, according to the official Guinness World Records, a 2008 creation in Indonesia was much bigger, coming in at a towering 33 metres (108 ft) tall.This is really the biggest cake in South America and maybe even the world, Mora said.There are 85 of us working on this and we are using close to 11,500 eggs, 10 sacks of flour, seven sacks of sugar, 20 kilos of baking powder, 300 kilos of dulce de leche, 300 litres of cream all to make this massive cake in honour of our beloved La Paz, he added.All the ingredients were donated by the companies who make them in the name of the city.A large crowd gathered at the plaza to marvel at the immense cake, but no doubt the highlight of the event will be when the cake is divvied up into thousands of pieces which will be handed out free of charge at the end of the day.