Let them eat cake!
Arup - the company who created the Gherkin skyscraper in London - will be producing a giant two-story replica of the iconic building in cake at the Battersea Park festival in London, near to the start of the river pageant, on Sunday.
The effort will be one of four by different engineering teams, all competing to build the tallest cake to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee next Sunday.
Stephanie Black, an electrical engineer with Arup, said the team was used to working with concrete and steel, but less so with materials such as chocolate and fruit cake.
She told the Sunday Times: "While we know a lot about concrete and steel, we were dealing with things like chocolate and fruit cake.
"We had to do a lot of testing on the new materials before we realised that diamond-shaped blocks of crispy cakes were the most sturdy."
Together the teams will use 66lb of flour, 408lb of butter, 990lb of sugar, four vats of golden syrup and 1,480lb of chocolate. Once completed, the cakes will be dismantled and fed to the Jubilee crowds.