ONE South East Cornwall man is fast becoming world famous – for baking a pasty the exact length and weight of his new-born baby.
Tim Fuge and his wife Jen welcomed their son Jowan into the world earlier than expected on April 4.
Unable to do his normal job as a leadworker due to self-isolating, Tim came up with a baking challenge he thought might be fun for his friends who had also had babies during the lockdown.
While the take-up amongst others ‘was a bit of a flop’, Tim, Jen, and their other two sons Aiden and Rory got stuck in, with Jen doing the crimping.
Tim, who lives in Tremar Coombe, explains that his motivation to begin with was ‘not wanting to go without pasties while my favourite shop, Barnecutts, was shut’.
‘I saw on Facebook that other people had been baking pasties with pictures of their babies next to them for scale,’ he said.
‘I started wondering to myself if I could eat a pasty the same size as Jowan.’
Once all the ingredients were assembled, Tim says he realised that scoffing the pasty in one go would be a monstrous task.
He says he skipped breakfast, went out for his daily walk and on his return, the pasty, which had been two and a half hours in the oven, was browned to perfection.
Not only that, at 6lb 4oz, and 19 inches long, it was exactly the size and weight of the youngest member of the family.
‘While my wife and the boys had their normal sized pasties, I sat at the table with that beast and managed to eat about half of it,’ says Tim.
‘I then didn’t eat for the rest of the day and had the other half for breakfast the day after.
‘That was a couple of days ago and actually I could quite fancy a pasty again now.’
Tim and Jen worked out that the giant-sized pasty contained a whopping 7,000 calories.
But reports that it was the first he had made aren’t quite true – Tim had previously cast a 5kg pasty in solid lead on a request from a customer.
‘I never did find out why they wanted it,’ he says,’ but I made two, so there is one going spare should anyone ever want a lead pasty.’