The Guinness World Record For The Largest Piece Of Candy

There are some times when you're so hungry you feel like you could eat anything put in front of you, no matter how big it is. Of course, our eyes are usually bigger than our stomachs. Nevertheless, when the hunger pangs strike, we start to fantasize about portions of extreme size. Perhaps that explains why certain people go out of their way to create the largest foods on record. Did you know Guinness has documented world records for the longest noodle, heaviest carrot, and biggest macaroni and cheese? Now those are dishes worth being proud of. When it comes to sweets, though, we may have sugar cravings to blame. You might find it difficult to believe some of the enormous confections people have assembled in recent decades.

In 2003, a North Carolina business baked a 40,000-pound chocolate chip cookie (via Ranker). Then, in 2010, a 5,760-pound fudge slab — consisting of chocolate, maple, and vanilla — was manufactured by a Canadian fudge factory. 2011 seems to have been a particularly productive year for record-breaking sweet tooths, as a 12,770-pound piece of chocolate was whipped up in the U.K., a 2,594-pound cupcake was created in Virginia, and a slice of ice cream cake that was 22,000 pounds heavy was decreed into existence by the Dairy Queen herself. 

Your dentist is probably shaking their head right now, but just wait until they hear about the largest piece of candy ever produced!

The Guinness World Record for largest candy belongs to a piece of butterscotch created by Nidar, a Norwegian candy company that's been around for more than a century. This record dates back to August 12th, 1997, in Trondheim, Norway, where the oversized morsel was put on display in a factory owned by the business. Just how big was it? Guinness' official measurements are 5 feet long by 5 feet wide by 17 inches tall. There's unfortunately no picture of it. (We get that it was over 20 years ago, but come on — people still had cameras back then.) Yet, it's still fun to imagine the vast and flat piece of butterscotch spread out on the factory floor. The thing was apparently around 3,500 pounds heavy, so we doubt anybody was able to lift it up to their mouth for a taste.

We do have a pretty good idea of what its flavor was like, anyway — at least, in theory. The record-setting butterscotch was a massively scaled-up version of Nidar's commercially available candy product. Since 1935, Nidar had been making Smorbukk butterscotch in huge copper pots, where they boiled caramel dough before rolling and cutting it into pieces. The resulting toffee treat must have packed a large deal of sugar for anyone with a big sweet tooth.