City celebrates 100 years with giant birthday cake

Eric Leake

Monday, May 16, 2005 | 10:59 a.m.

Even the cutting of the cake was all Vegas.

Politicians and celebrities sliced into what was billed as the "World's Largest Birthday Cake" at Cashman Center Sunday afternoon as showgirls looked on, fireworks exploded and the crowd cheered.

After the fireworks subsided, people with a sweet tooth took their turns at a vain attempt to devour the cake.

"I've never had this many people at my party," said Austin Haywood, who turned 15 Sunday, a member of the 5-15 Club, Southern Nevada residents who share a birthday with the city. "I don't like cake, I love it," Austin said. "I'm going to eat pounds. I'll go home heavier."

Brian Averna, the Sara Lee executive chef who led the cake's construction, marveled at the pastry that filled the convention hall.

"This is, as it should be, a monster cake," Averna said.

The Guinness Book of World Records will determine if the cake sets the record as the world's largest. It could take a few months for that to happen, Centennial officials said. Guinness officials filmed the process and a list of ingredients will be sent along by Sara Lee.

The seven-layer vanilla cake was 102 feet long and 52 feet wide. It weighed more than 130,000 pounds, totaling around 23 million calories.

The 30,240 half-sheets of yellow cake were baked in Tarboro, N.C., and trucked to Las Vegas to be assembled and frosted by 1,000 volunteers.

To qualify for the record book, the cake must be the same proportion of ingredients as an average cake and be a single cake (frosting joins the pieces together). It also needed to be made under sanitary conditions and be safe to eat.

"It's the same process as when you or I would bake a cake in our kitchen, only on a gigantic scale," Averna said.

He said one difference was an icing recipe that gave the cake a prolonged shelf life.

The cake served as dessert for a weekend of Las Vegas Centennial events. Sunday marked the 100-year anniversary of the land auction that led to the birth of Las Vegas. The city's incorporation followed six years after.

A re-enactment of the land auction, with Las Vegas Mayor Goodman and other officials participating, took place earlier Sunday.

Among the weekend celebrations was the revived Helldorado Days Parade down Fourth Street Saturday, seen by 80,000 people, according to Goodman.

"I think there's a yearning of the people who live in Las Vegas to identify with the city," Goodman said. "Las Vegas always does the biggest and the best. To have no less than this would be unacceptable to us on our birthday."

The retail value of the cake was priced at $250,000. It was paid for without taxpayer dollars by the Centennial Commission and sponsors.

Kevin Endicott was one of the hundreds of volunteers who assembled the cake in shifts over a 14-hour stretch. He said he had enough cake.

"That was the consensus, that nobody will eat another piece of cake. People were cleaning it out of their ears, their hair," Endicott said. He wore a Costco apron spackled in icing.

Once the cake was cut it became a feeding frenzy.

People grabbed empty boxes, some cut cake with their hands, ate what they could and carried out heaps. And after all of that the massive cake was hardly dented.

"I heard a woman yell, 'I've never seen so much gluttony in my life,' " said Melanie Bene, laughing. "We want to yell food fight."

She and her husband had a mound of cake on a cardboard tray.

"It's good. It's really good. I like the frosting," said Kanon Bene after taking a taste. "It's going to last a long time."

The Aber family, including two boys, had enough cake for everybody.

"I can tell him, 'That's your cake, that's your brother's cake, and that's my cake,' " Tsutomu Aber said, pointing to boxes of cake at his feet.

Organizers said nonprofit groups were invited to take the remainder of the cake and that some could possibly go to the RC Farms pig farm.

They said no cake would be wasted, although much of it remained when the conventional hall closed.