A CREAM tea fit for a king which was made at a bakery in Markyate has smashed the record for the world s biggest scone. Baking in association with the National Trust (NT), which is famed for its delicious cream teas, Prudens Bakery on the High Street use

A CREAM tea fit for a king which was made at a bakery in Markyate has smashed the record for the world's biggest scone.

Baking in association with the National Trust (NT), which is famed for its delicious cream teas, Prudens Bakery on the High Street used its giant three by two metre wide oven to create the 60kg scone.

The mixed fruit scone, which had a circumference of 89cm, was transported to the NT's Dunstable Downs' Food Festival on August 28, where it was smothered with 10kg of local strawberry jam and 5kg of clotted cream before being sold to hundreds of hungry visitors.

Andrew Pruden, whose family have been baking at the Markyate shop since 1928, said that it was a novel experience: "We've never baked anything quite so big at Prudens and it filled the whole village with the smell of fresh scones! We were happy to help the National Trust in their mission and I hear it tasted great too."

Catering Manager at the NT Chiltern Gateway Centre in Whipsnade Fran Brennan helped mixed the scone batter at midnight with help from Prudens giant food mixer. After just over three hours in the oven and a couple of hours cooling time, the enormous baked treat was taken to the Dunstable Downs centre at around 8am.

Fran, a keen baker, said that it went down a storm with visitors: "It tasted even better than our regular scones - perhaps we've discovered a new rule of baking: the bigger the better! Despite its huge size, there wasn't even a crumb left at the end of the day. We're already dreaming up plans to make an even larger one.