A COMPANY in Swindon is helping put the royal icing on the cake as part of the official Diamond Jubilee Celebrations.

Halcrow, an engineering consultancy firm based at Burderop Park, has launched an employee competition to design and build the tallest cake to mark the big occasion.

On Sunday, June 3, there will be two official events taking place in London. The Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant, and the Thames Diamond Jubilee Festival in Battersea Park.

One of the events taking place at the festival is the ‘Cake in the Clouds’ competition which aims to build the tallest cake.

Six teams, made up of engineering, design and baking specialists, will be pitted against each other to create the tallest structure made out of edible materials.

The contest celebrates British engineering and architecture skills and emphasises that baking is a form of design.

The competition looks at how architectural and engineering principles can be applied to cake, to create something tall and aesthetically pleasing.

Halcrow wanted to let all its employees, no matter where they are in the world, have the opportunity to get involved and a design competition seemed the best idea.

Halcrow’s PR manager Sarah Nichols is running the competition.

She said: “It was an absolute honour for us to get involved in an official Jubilee event.

“We wanted to use the skills of all our employees and the competition has certainly got people’s imaginations going.

“I have received many entries so far and they are all very different in style and tactics.

“Putting it together in Battersea Park on the day is going to be lots of fun.”

The official Cake in the Clouds rules state that the whole thing must be edible, you must be able to cut it with an ordinary kitchen knife, it must be assembled on site, on the day and it must fit on the plinth provided, which will be 2m squared.

The winner of the competition will be announced next week.