It’s the Great British Bake-Off, 1714-style

Using a recipe dating from 1714 for an “extraordinary plumb” cake, she has turned out a 2ft creation which is the weight of a small child to celebrate a market town’s golden era.

A nine-day festival in Beverley this month will mark the 300th anniversary of its Market Cross and succession of George 1, the monarch who ushered in the Georgian era, with 25 events including a masked banquet and harpsichord music by candlelight.

Mrs Mathieson’s cake - this one will feed 300 - will be handed out on the last day, after the proclamation of the King’s succession is read out by the Market Cross and a volley has been fired by “redcoats”.

The Georgian era, Mrs Mathieson says, was the start of cake-making - the first time people other than Royalty would experience one, but only as a rare treat.

Sticking to the spirit of the 1714 recipe down to her hand-made dress, which has cable ties for stays instead of whalebone, she mixed the dough by hand.

That was left for an hour to rise before being piled into a hoop of brown paper and baked for two hours in the only local oven big enough at the Darby and Joan Hall in Cottingham.