Belgians are always keen to take part in culinary events, especially when there’s a world record and a charity involved. Master pastry chefs from the Limburg region, on both sides of the Belgian–Dutch border, earned themselves a place in the Guinness Book of Records by baking the largest and heaviest apricot tart ever made.
© Els Diederen (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The tasty record-breaking creation was baked to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Bakery and Confectionery Fair (BBB) in Maastricht. No better way to mark such a milestone than with something truly spectacular - quite literally! Of course, the Belgian team couldn’t resist joining in. After three months of preparation and eight hours of hands-on teamwork with some 50 ingredients, baker Johan Nulens from Lanaken, together with his Dutch colleagues and the students of the Sint-Martinus bakery school in Herk-de-Stad, completed their monumental masterpiece. The numbers are enough to make your head spin: 530 kg of apricots, 50 kg of flour, 600 eggs, 3.5 kg of yeast, 3.2 kg of salt, and 300 kg of sugar. The result? A giant tart measuring 7 metres across, weighing 1,057 kg - more than a tonne! After the event, the tart was cut into 10,000 pieces and sold to raise funds for families in financial difficulty. The remaining slices were shared with hospital staff and patients in Maastricht.
The ingredients and proportions followed the strict standards of the protected regional speciality, Limburgse Vlaai, except for one detail: this tart was a little too big to eat by hand, which is why it had to be sliced into 10,000 pieces!
