At Mohegan Sun, breaking world record is a cakewalk

Laura Walsh

Monday, Feb. 9, 2004 | 9 a.m.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Mohegan Sun casino pastry chefs worked hard last week to prove that you can have your cake and eat it too.

They made what they hope will be the world's largest wedding cake. The seven-tier cake weighs more than 14,000 pounds and measures about 17-feet tall, and made its debut at the casino in Uncasville on Sunday.

"It just keeps going up," Executive Pastry Chef Lynn Mansel said while the cake was still being created. "I still can't believe we did it."

Mansel is hoping to top the Guinness Book record set by a 5,334-pound cake baked in June 2003 at Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla.

Mansel and his crew began assembling the massive white cake on Feb. 1. The top ingredients include 10,000 pounds of cake batter and 4,810 pounds of frosting, he said. The cake rests on a gigantic scale for measuring purposes, and each tier is separated by steel discs.

"I had to think a lot," Mansel said of the design. "I had to think of all the wedding cakes I've already done and then multiply that by 100."

Forklifts were needed to raise and carefully place each tier, while the crew used a boom -- a mini-crane -- to decorate the top of the cake.

With a Sunday deadline, the team was in overdrive, working to cover any cracks with frosting and adding the finishing touches -- chocolate bows and hearts -- to the vanilla-flavored cake.

Mansel came up with the idea this fall as a way to draw attention to the New England Bridal Showcase at the casino. The event features wedding planners, photographers and caterers.

"Back then I thought he (Mansel) was crazy," Pastry Chef Brett Barnaby said. "It just seemed so unreachable."

And now?

"Well now, I guess I think anything is possible," Barnaby said, laughing.

In order to ensure a mention in the Guinness Book of Records, the crew took pictures to verify the size and weight of the cake all last week. The Mohegan Tribal Health Department was acting as an independent party to record the cake's ingredients and to make sure, most importantly, that the cake is edible.

"The biggest thing is that the cake is cake, that it can be eaten," Saverio Mancini, a spokesman for Mohegan Sun, said.

Guests at the bridal show had a chance to sample the cake Sunday.

All of the evidence will immediately be sent to the Guinness Book of Records' main office in London where it will be scrutinized, spokeswoman Kate White said. It can take one or two months for an entry to be accepted or denied, she said.

"I would say this has a good chance of making it," White said. "It's more than double the weight of the first cake."

All leftovers -- and they expect to have a lot -- were being shipped to a pig farm in Montville. The casino is concerned the cake won't remain fresh long, Mancini said.

But Mansel doesn't think the pigs will mind all that much.

"Those are going to be some very sweet pigs," he said.