French Bakery Sets Guinness World Record for Longest Strawberry Cake

"I am happy to announce that the cake measures 121.88 m," declared Anouk de Timary, judge-referee for the Guinness World Records, confirming that this strawberry cake, made by Youssef El Gatou and his team, is the longest in the world. The owner of the bakery-pastry shop on Avenue Gabriel-Péri is proud of this achievement. "The stress is coming down. I don’t realize it yet because I’m very tired. I think I’ll realize all this tomorrow morning," he confides to Le Parisien, adding that he is also "proud" of his team who "accomplished exceptional work." "They played the game, the prize is theirs, to all the people of Argenteuil and to our country."

With this 121.88 m strawberry cake, Argenteuil dethrones the municipality of Saint-Maure (Turin, Italy) which held the previous record with a 100.48 m cake, made on May 19, 2019. To make his cake, Youssef El Gatou used 350 kg of strawberries, 4,000 eggs, 560 kg of mousseline cream, and 30 kg of mascarpone. "There must be 1.2 tons of cake here," he details, specifying that the making of this strawberry cake took "a good forty hours" in total. "It was a lot of preparation, a lot of tests. We started in October," adds Mazin Kheiry, head pastry chef at Maison Héloïse.

The other difficult step was assembling the strawberry cake at the Argenteuil ice rink. Started at midnight, it ended in the early morning. "We had moments of fatigue, moments of cold too. The bulk was done around 7 or 8 am," details Youssef El Gatou. The pastry chef was aided in this task by a team of 25 people, including employees, friends from Morocco, Brittany, China, or Japan. "I really wanted there to be a mix of people representing pastry-making. There are apprentices, interns, pastry chefs, and even a Meilleur Ouvrier de France," he explains.

Length is not the only criterion taken into account for this strawberry cake to be entered in the Guinness World Records. "The cake must meet a certain number of criteria," explains Anouk de Timary, emphasizing that it must be made with real strawberries, cream, and a biscuit, and measure 8 cm in height and width. Youssef El Gatou’s cake meets these conditions: it measures 8 cm high and 14 cm wide. To all this is added the unified shape of the cake and compliance with hygiene rules. "The last thing we’ll check is that it must be consumed by human beings. We do not condone waste," she indicates.

Cut into 6,000 portions, the cake was distributed to the public present at the ice rink. Part was given to beneficiaries of the communal social action center and to nursing home residents, as well as to law enforcement and firefighters. "The goal was to bring people together, to create connections," rejoices El Gatou.