Baker builds UK’s biggest doughnut

Booming bakery business Project D has made the UK’s biggest-ever doughnut – containing almost 170,000 calories and weighing in at a massive 40kg.

The Derby-based firm was approached to create the one-off whopper as a surprise 40^th birthday cake for Nottingham mother-of-two Rebecca Brough.

Rebecca’s husband Marc had the bumper brainwave after ordering 1,000 standard-sized doughnuts from Project D to help celebrate the third anniversary of his serviced office-space business Cubo Work.

The mammoth order led Rebecca to reveal she would love a doughnut cake for her big birthday the following week. So Marc secretly arranged for Project D to bake a record-breaking sweet treat to blow her socks off.

The result was a doughnut measuring 1.4 metres in diameter, weighing as much as a baby calf and crammed with 169,342 calories – the same as around 740 Mars Bars or 1,400 large bananas.

Rebecca said: “It was insane. It was absolutely incredible. I couldn’t believe the size of it when they brought it in.

“The doughnut was so big that they had to fully open the double doors at the Cubo office in Derby just to get it inside the room.

“It was the best birthday cake ever, and it’s fantastic to think my birthday has probably become part of a UK record.”

Rebecca said that the colossal confection, filled with both raspberry jam and chocolate and topped with vanilla cream, chocolate icing, chocolate fudge brownies, raspberries, golden Dairy Milk chunks and swirls of caramel cream, tasted as good as it looked.

“And, amazingly, none of it went to waste,” she said. “It was shared with everyone at the Cubo office and was scoffed in record time. I also saved a piece for each of my children – and they loved it!”

Rebecca would not reveal how much husband Marc paid for the delicious dessert, but added that it was worth every penny.

Max Poynton, operations director for Project D, said: “We’re over the moon to have been invited to play such a big part in both Rebecca’s special birthday and Cubo’s third birthday celebrations.

“Our design and bakery teams definitely came up trumps with Rebecca’s monster doughnut cake. As far as we can find out, it’s the UK’s biggest doughnut by a long way.”

The award-winning firm, which prides itself on producing ‘the world’s best doughnuts’, has launched scores of creative designs since it was founded by former school friends Max Poynton, Matt Bond and Jacob Watts in 2018.

Project D has collaborated with numerous well-known brands during its short lifetime, including Amazon, Brewdog, Sainsbury’s and Coca-Cola.

It now employs more than 120 staff and produces more than 50,000 doughnuts each week at its bakery in Derby.

For online orders and further information about the company, visit www.projectdoughnut.co.uk.